Reflective blog #3

Reflective blog #3

This week was a week full of learning in 3rd hour as we learned the correlation between mass and volume and the relationship between cubic centimeters and mL.  With all this new knowledge in my brain I shall reflect on what I have learned and refresh my memory.  On Monday we started to discuss the relationship between cubic centimeters and milliliters. we did this by pouring some water into a rectangular, clear box and found the volume of the water, then we poured the water into a graduated cylinder and found how many mL it was.  Our table got a line of best fit with a slope around .940, which is pretty close to the 1 we would have gotten if we had done the experiment perfectly, I account this to human error. We would have gotten a 1 because one cubic centimeter of anything equals 1 mL of the same thing.  We didn't a formal white board meeting but you did go around and talk about each tables data yourself. This also carried over into Tuesday. 

My table's data from the activity

After we were done talking about cm3 and mL we talked about mass and volume and how they relate. You had us start getting the mass of the 3 different materials which were aluminium, steel and acrylic each with five different pieces of various sizes. Then on Wednesday we did the volume of each materials in graduated cylinders by taking the before and after measurements of the water. then at the end of Wednesday and beginning of Thursday we used the tool logger pro to help graph our data and put in lines of best fit for all our data.  We then talked about how  density is a combination between volume and mass, we also learned that since waters g/mL or measurement of density anything higher than that sinks.  A funny thing that happened on Thursday was that halfway through the class we were asked to go to a thing where we meet the counselor and because of that the remaining juniors and seniors didn't have to do the worksheet until the next day.

My table finding the volume of a steel cylinder

This worksheet that I previously mentioned above was what we focused on for most of Friday.  Basically what we did was, you'd ask us as a table to do one or two problems and then we would whiteboard our answers.  We did this for questions 1, 2, 3 and 4 but for 4 we did a class debate over who was right.  Almost all of the other side changed their minds and the few who didn't couldn't back up their opinion with evidence.  The other questions that we white boarded were all about comparing mass, volume and density.

My table's answers for number 3

So all in all this week we learned about how density is affected by volume and mass. Plus the unit for measuring things density in g/mL.  I have to say that this week was a good week not to miss or I would have had a lot of catching up to do.