In a demonstration around menthol, students saw firsthand how menthol, which has a fairly strong odor as a solid, had an EVEN STRONGER odor as it was heated.  Students walked through an initial discussion of how matter changes from one state of matter to the next, and are starting to see how this relates to our overall driving question of "How can I smell things from a distance?"

We heated the menthol, allowing it to change from a solid, to a liquid, and to a gas, and with the help of ice, cooled the menthol from a gas, back to a liquid, and then to a solid again.  We'll be using the ideas from this demonstration to further develop the model to explain the "how we smell things" phenomena!

Students have uncovered that air takes up space.  Check out the photos above to see the evidence!

If air takes up space, then how does this relate to why sometimes I smell something and why other times I don't?  What is air's role in why I smell something in the first place?  What are those air particles really doing? 

As students develop models to explain the "how we smell" phenomena, it's important to take a deeper look at matter.  Just what is it?  How can it be described and measured?  And how can our findings with the obvious (solids and liquids) relate to the less obvious (gases)?  Students have uncovered that the odors they smell must be a gas, and that the odor particles must be different than air, but how exactly do they work together?  Only time will tell before students uncover this!

Students completed labs this week to solidify their understanding of mass and volume--great work 6th grade!

So we all agree that an odor travels to our noses.  But what exactly does that mean and look like?  Here are some snapshots of our initial thinking!  I wonder if our models will change as we gather more evidence!

We've started our unit on how we can smell things like fried chicken at the local restaurant even though we're standing outside and not eating it by generating questions for our Driving Question Board.  Our overall question, "How Can I Smell Things from a Distance?" is broken up into the three sub-questions:

​1.  How does an odor get to my nose?
2.  What makes one odor different from another?
3.  Can a material change so you can smell it?

We're off to a great start wondering about this phenomena!