Tuesday February 9th, 2016

Today's Quote:

Recap:

Yesterday in 8th-grade classes we began our notes over Newton's second law. I pointed out that, while most people can quote Newton's Laws, they cannot apply them to life. Our goal is not to memorize what the Laws state, but rather how they are applied in everyday situations such as driving a car around a corner, riding on a bus, and when skateboarding. 

To that end we began looking at Newton's Second law from the aspect of acceleration. I pointed out that the word acceleration has two meanings; one scientific and one for the person on the street. To a person on the street, acceleration refers to speeding up only. In science, acceleration means to speed up, or change velocity. Recall from our previous unit that velocity is spped with a direction attached, therefore if you are in a car traveling north and it is increasing in speed it can be said to be accelerating. However, if you are in a car and you are going around a corner but your speed remains the same, we would say you are STILL accelerating because your direction is changing every moment you are in your turn. We said that what the average street person calls braking we would, scientifically, call deceleration or negative acceleration.

I pointed out that acceleration is reported in the standard unit of meters per second, squared  (m/s2) We also clarified that Force is simply a push or a pull on an object and net force is a sum of all the forces acting on an object. For our class, force will be reported in the unit called a Newton which is the amount of force required to move a one-kilogram mass one meter per second per second (Kg/s2). Finally we have mass which we clarified is NOT weight. Weight is a measure of the pull of gravity on an object and mass refers to the amount of matter packed into an object. I used the example of a trunk that contains a 10 Kg mass. On Earth, with gravity's force being 9.81m/s2 the mass of the trunk is 10 Kg, however if we take that same trunk to the moon it's mass has not changed but its weight will be less since the moon is 1.622 m/s2 (or about one sixth that of Earth's) We will continue this train of study today

In 7th grade we introduced the digestive system and pointed out that digestion actually begins in the mouth with the mastication of food into a bolus whichis then transported down the thin but tough elastic tube runnig to the stomach called the esophagus. This movement is assisted by peristaltic action. This is where the act of swallowing force the ridged lining of the esophagus to open slightly upward allowing the bolus to enter the tube and the continual contractions push the food to the top of the stomach where it contacts the sphincter at the top of the stomach. We then used the remainder of the class to do a mini heart dissection to look at the structure of the heart.

Brain Bender:

Mrs. Shady was laying dead on a bed and on the floor beside it was a pair of scissors. The scissors were instrumental in her death, yet there is not a trace of blood. Mrs. Shady's body shows no signed of any cuts or bruises. How could she have been murdered with the scissors

Agenda:

8th Grade Honors:

Newton's Second Law Force = Mass x Acceleration

The Physics Classroom 

Homework problems- Due Wednesday

Upcoming, Hovercraft!

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7th Grade Honors

The Digestive System!

We will be cutting open our frog stomachs to check the contents. This will allow us to see what your frog ate before it died.

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8th Grade 

FCA #3 then chapter work.

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Aquaculture:

Weighing fish and determining nutritiona need.