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Okay...one more thing!

4/5/2016

To officially-officially wrap up our unit, sixth graders made personal add riddles for various terms used throughout our "How Can I Smell an Odor from a Distance?" To make you laugh...here were some of the simple statements they made...

"I like to skip class, so if you don't, then we won't be a match."
-Sublimation (because it skips a going from a solid to a liquid before it becomes a gas)

"I've got tons of energy, so if you aren't willing to move with me, then we won't be good together."
-Gas (because the particles are moving the fastest out of the three states of matter)

"I am looking to slow down in life, so if you're not into doing this, don't even bother contacting me."
-Condensation (because the particles slow down during this phase change)

And that's a wrap!

3/31/2016

Sixth grade has come a long way to explaining their driving question of how they can smell things from a distance. By using the scientific practice of modeling, they've uncovered a LOT of science content that explains this phenomenon. From particle theory, to phase changes, to molecular structure, they're on a role with understanding basic chemistry principles they'll revisit in later years. Great work 6th grade!

Here's a close up of the various parts of our Driving Question Board.

Putting It All Together...

3/27/2016

So we're nearing the end of our unit on how we can smell an odor from a distance, and we're finally able to put it altogether! Check out the models we've built as a class, and compare each one. In a culminating activity, we built consensus in discussion to explain this phenomenon. Great work sixth graders! I bet you'll never think the same way about how you smell something ever again!

Do solids have to melt, then evaporate for me to smell them?

3/21/2016

We smell menthol and it doesn't seem to melt. We smell play-dough and deodorant, too, and they don't seem to melt and then evaporate. So is it possible that some solids can completely skip the melting/evaporation phases and go straight from a solid to a gas?

The answer is yes!

And the process is sublimation. When solids change from a solid to a gas, they sublimate. Much of what we smell is because of this process. We'll be using this process to help explain why we smell an odor from a distance...

Dry Ice Sublimation

Melting Wax! (Do solids behave the same way as liquids and gases?)

3/18/2016

Does what happens to a gas and a liquid regarding molecular motion also happen to a solid? What if we heat and cool a solid? How does it change, if at all?

We're working through our reasoning to this phenomenon and we're discovering many things. We still have questions about how we smell an odor though since we don't see all solids melt, and we recognize we smell something b/c there must be a gas particle in the air. It's getting us thinking for sure!

Extending Our Heating and Cooling Models

3/18/2016

How does food coloring respond when placed in both cold and hot water? What can this show us about how the molecules of water and food coloring interact with one another, especially when the temperatures of the water are drastically different? We're using this experience to gain a greater understanding of how molecular motion works!

Modeling Heating/Cooling

3/16/2016

We're continuing to develop models to explain our thinking how molecular motion is related to temperature and phase changes, ultimately trying to explain how we can smell an odor from a distance. Today we used beads and bottles to strengthen our models that we've drawn on paper. Drawings can't show molecular motion like this!

Modeling Condensation

3/16/2016

As a liquid heats up, its molecules collide into one another, causing them to take up more space. Some of these molecules have enough energy to change into a gaseous molecule.

But when happens as these gaseous molecules begin to cool down?

Sixth graders are looking at the process of condensation. They've developed a model to explain this phenomenon.

We've also looked at real world examples of this process--"fog" on the mirror in the bathroom after a cold shower, contrails behind a jet flying in the sky, water dripping from a glass filled with ice water.

Explaining Evaporation, Boiling, and Condensation of Water...

3/12/2016

While students understand the connections between speed of molecules and temperature, how can these ideas be connected to explaining a more complex process like condensation?

It was obvious for students to see that as the temperature of a hot plate increased, water began to evaporate and boil. We turned what we saw into a physical model (check out the video below). And then used this to explain how water that had evaporated into the air could condense on the outside of a cold cup above. Check out our models to explain this next week!

Representing Molecular Motion in 2-D

3/10/2016

How can we represent the motion we saw from an online simulation? How can we show that as the temperature of a substance increases, the motion of the molecules changes, too?

We're continuing to work on the practice of modeling, and our observations are showing us that molecules not only move faster as the temperature increases, but the volume also increases, too. We've also discovered that even though substances can be solids at specific temperatures, the molecules that make them up are STILL moving, too!

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