Aspergers Syndrome

We had a great discussion today around Autism and Aspergers syndrome. I discussed some of the work I have done with autistic children then we watched the below video to prompt some discussion. It is a real life interview between a boy with Aspergers and his Mum. We discussed all sorts of things from the video, such as what it means to be 'your own worst enemy.' The discussion then turned to parenting and what they perceived the difficulties of parenting would be .

National Young Leaders Day

We had a great day in Rotorua being inspired to live as inspiring leaders to others. It was great to hear so many good messages about pointing yourself in the right direction, living for others, and getting the people around you to help you achieve your dreams. There were many stories of overcoming challenges and the importance of resilience and believing in yourself.

Look our for the students personal reflections on their blog posts. 

Here ares some great bits of advice from the day:

• Good relationships produce good things. Choose your friends well. People are like elevators – they either take you up or down.
• Success is 90% hard work and 10% talent.
• You don’t have to have a badge to be a leader. Don’t be a leader at school if you can’t be one at home. Leaders lead all the time.
• Always do the right thing even if you want to do the left thing. Do the right thing regardless of who is around. 
• Be a leader even when it is hard. It is more important how I feel about my actions that what my friends feel.
• The obstacles in your life don’t have to define who you are or who will be.
• We can’t achieve goals by ourselves – life is not meant to be lived alone. Tell people your dreams.
• Celebrate and focus on the good.
• Learn how to communicate. Get the information where it needs to go. Use manners!
• Build bridges – when we build bridges with people different from us we both become richer.
• Leadership is catchy like a cold, but much more fun.
• Borrow courage from others and lend them yours.
• The stones we cast will have ripples.

Physical change

In science it is important to be able to identify the difference between a physical change and a chemical change.

A physical change is when:

1. There is a change in state or shape but there is no chemical change. The chemical formula remains the same. 
2. You can also reverse the change.

When water changes to either ice or steam it has undergone a physical change. It is still H2O in all three states. We could also change the ice or steam back into water. Here is a video of what happens when H20 changes into the different states.

Other examples of physical change include heating gas, bending metal, or melting plastic. They change their state or shape but nothing changes at the atom or molecule level.

We did the mentos and coke experiment and discussed how it undergoes a physical change (it is often mistaken for a chemical change). The mentos actually just speeds up the release of the carbon dioxide because its bumpy surface makes it easy for the dissolved CO2 to form as bubbles. We could, in theory, gather the released CO2 and the spilt coke, put it back together again and get our fizzy coke back.

Molecules

We have explored what a molecule is. This is a video that explains it really well.


A molecule is two (or more) atoms that join and form a bond. This bond is formed by the atoms sharing their electrons.

Some molecules are quite simple like water which is H20 (2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom)

  Some are more complex like table sugar which is C12H22O11.

We had a great question from Antony about how they find out how many of each atom are in the different molecules. This will be a great question for us to explore.
We also briefly talked about how they make molecules - another great question to explore.

Simple, Compound, or Complex?

A great explanation from Lola about the differences between simple, compound and complex sentences.

• Simple - a sentence with a subject, verb, and one idea.
• Compound - two simple sentences joined into one sentence with a conjunction. Both parts of the sentence can stand alone.
• Complex - a simple sentence that has an extending phrase. It has a part that makes sense on its own and a part (the extending phrase) that doesn't make sense on its own.

Imploding cans and free diving

Today we did a few experiments to explore density. We explored how heat affects density and makes substances expand and retract because of temperature.

We put a small bit of water in the can. As it boiled it turned the water into a gas state which pushed out the air in the can. When the can was turned upside down in the cold water the gas quickly cooled and condensed back to a liquid pulling in the metal as it did so. A cool experiment!

We also looked again at how when atoms are heated they 'shake' more violently. We were able to see this in action when we dropped some food colouring into both cold water and hot water. The food colouring spread more quickly through the hot water as the atoms were more active.

So we have seen that heat affects density, but we also looked today at how different things have different densities just because of the way they are structured. We looked at how salt water is more dense than fresh water. This gave us lots to think about in terms of things like boats, swimming, survival in deep water, and free diving. Could you dive deeper in fresh water as it is less dense that salt water?
I showed them this photo of me in the dead sea in Israel to help explain differences in water density because of salt content.

Shaking atoms

We looked today at how atoms are always moving. When you heat them they shake more. Because they shake more they need more space to move so they spread out. As they spread out they can no longer remain as a solid so they turn to a liquid. If you keep heating them they spread out more and the liquid becomes a gas. If you keep heating them then you will get plasma.

When you boil water the bubbles that rise are actually the H20 turning into a gas as it is heated. They start at the botto of the jug because that is closest to the heat.

We also looked at how condensation is the opposite action of a gas turning to a liquid as it is cooled down.

The universe's ingredients!

Today we started to look at the periodic table - the ingredient list of all matter. We looked at how each element consists of a different atom. We explored atoms more and learnt that atoms are different from each other because of the number of protons in each one. Every element has a different number of protons (it is written on the table as the atomic number). Some elements have over 100 protons (most atoms also have the same number of electrons as it has protons). There are still some unknown elements. But scientists already know how many protons they will have because of the place they will have in the periodic table. Currently there are 118 known elements.

We looked at how humans have about 40 different types of atoms in their bodies.

We looked at which elements we are familiar with and discussed questions like why steel is not on the table (it is a metal made from a combination of elements).

It was so good to see the curiosity of the students about the atomic world.

Atoms

We started to discuss atoms today - the smallest part of matter. We watched some great videos to help us get our heads around the size of atoms and their structure. We discovered that all matter is made up of atoms. Everything - trees, stones, air, eyeballs! Atoms are also constantly moving, so even a rock is constantly moving. We started to raise the question of how scientists know all about atoms when they are so small. A big question! We discussed how we can't see the wind but we can learn about wind by looking at the effects of the wind and how it affects objects in different situations. It is a bit like that with studying atoms.

The structure of an atom.

Atoms are ridiculously small. The photo on the right is a photo of the shadow of an atom. Scientists directed a laser beam at a suspended atom and this was it's shadow. The first visualization of an atom. We watched the below videos to help us get our head around how small they are and how they are structured. 

We also noted that electricity is when the electrons in atoms flow (swap)between electrons in other atoms.

Attitude determines altitude

We had some great discussion today around this inspiring video. As our school motto says, attitude determines so much in our lives.

Is there anything in the box?

Our inquiry this term is on the material world and we started off by looking at whether a box with no object in it is actually empty. Is air something or nothing? We learnt that 'matter' is the world all around us. We can tell if something is matter by whether it, TAKES UP SPACE and WEIGHS SOMETHING. So we tested this with air and found that, yes, it does take up space and it does weigh something. Here is a video of some of the things that helped us learn this. Jorja helped us see that it is impossible to blow up a balloon in a bottle as the air in the bottle has nowhere to go. We shrink wrapped some students to explore how air takes up space and we used some balloons to see if air weighs anything.

We also looked at how air moves and watched this cool video.
 Wonderings: I wonder if there are places with no matter at all? Does air weigh the same when it is polluted?

We have also had a great discussion around which of these (below) are matter and which are not. The ones that really got us thinking were smell, electricity, anger, heat, a shadow, and sound. A great discussion for helping us understand what is matter and what is energy.

We are going to explore all sorts of other things about the material world, including zooming into the particle level of atoms and molecules. It is going to be great fun!