Wednesday September 17th and Thursday September 18th, 2014 (BLOCK DAYS)

BLOCK days

OPEN HOUSE

September 18th, 2014 5:45pm- 7:00pm

Today's Quote:

Today's Lateral Thinking question:

If a red house is made of red bricks, and a blue house is made of blue bricks, what is a green house made of?

Now Playing During Lunch

How to Create a graph in Excel For Beginners
The Beginners Guide To Graphing Data

Today's Class:

I returned the corrected Invitation 13 papers today. Grades will not show up until tomorrow in the portal, however it was included on the 4 week progress report. The graphing quiz scheduled for this week has been moved to Monday of next week in order to allow more time for students to study. Please watch the video as the entire quiz is IN THE VIDEO Ball Bounce Challenge Today we finished up our data table and began working on the Netbooks in Excel. Students learned how to create a graph from scratch.

Today's homework:

Watch How To Create a Graph in Excel For Beginners.
Watch for review!How to construct a graph. I spoke briefly about the video homework and told the classes that there is no vocabulary quiz this week, however, there will be a quiz on Monday of next week.

Today's discussion question:

using a program such as Excel to analyze data and create a graph is an example of ?

PM Update:

First of all, I need to apologize for being on a short fuse. I knew I was getting a migraine when I got to school but I didn't want anyone to miss out so I tried to tough it out. Better day tomorrow!
Our plans to use the laptops failed miserably due to the computer shutting down before we could use them. We'll try it again next week. For now we'll construct our graphs old school. Classes worked through analysis of their data today and began to grasp that "doing an experiment or lab"is only a tiny portion f the scientific method. As I stated earlier in this unit, scientists spend most of their time in research and analysis. This sounds daunting, but the payoff is huge. I used the example of Dr. Keeling and the famous Keeling curve featured in the BGTGD video. His data set was enormous and he managed to convert it into a graph that was understandable by even those people who may not be scientific wiz kids. Check out this real tie website to monitor the Keeling curve and Carbon dioxide particles in the atmosphere. NOAA Earth System Research Lab, Global Monitoring Division
I went over a few terms we need as we move forward. These included Data set- a collection of data points within a research project (trail 1 at 2 cinder blocks, trial 2 at 3 cinder blocks, etc. And data point- a specific piece of data within a data set. For example the bounce eight of the ball in the second trial at 2 cinder blocks. As we worked students began to unravel their data sets and started to recognize patterns within the collected information. As the pattern became clear, students were able to then make a prediction- a statement about what will happen or might happen in the future. From this prediction students were able to determine the possible bounce height of their next trials. We then went back out into the hall to see if their prediction of the bounce height at 8 cinder blocks was accurate. The next step is to calculate the percentage error in our predicted value from the observed value. That formula can be found at this link:Calculating percent error.
Although I did not get to it in all blocks today you should look over the information on Precision and accuracy and how they look in science. Use this link to examine this subject. DO NOT CREATE AN ACCOUNT, I already have. The username for everyone is redshoulderhawks. The password is Horizon2014 I maintain this account so please do not share the username or password on other websites. The link is: Brain Pop.
You can also download the FREE app for your Android device and log in with the information I provided. Brain Pop for Android.

COOL APP ALERT!

Thanks to Jamz Petkanis for turning me on to a new app that's GREAT for what we do in class. This is the FREE version: Timeshift Burst. If you have an android phone I strongly recommend you DL this one. I don't know what the Apple version is, so you're on your own. Check out Jamz Photos of their ball bounce lab on our FaceBook page. We had a discussion over precision and accuracy in 6th period today so I wanted to share the information I covered. Accuracy and Precision
Finally, an interesting article came out in the journal, Nature today It indicates that all of Europe had only three ancestral base population that interbred. Check it out here: Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans.