Thanksgiving Inquiry

In gearing up for the end of the year personally, I was challenged again at Walden to experiment on a subject with very little background. As i am rebounding from Halloween -




and dealing with waist issues due to Thanksgiving Day mealS.... Heat transferences was an assignment... I was able to gather turkey day guests to help me in my science inquiry:

Introduction
The recurring theme of my writing in this class has been the fact that I lack the strong content in physical science – however, I’m learning by not only writing or commenting on the required assignments – but by actually participating in these experiences. This week’s assignment is exploring heat transference, and exploring characteristics that make good insulators of heat. At an early stage of my science education, it was etched in my memory that air is a good insulator that does not let heat pass through very easily (Glencoe, 2005). By finding a material(s) to trap this air can prevent heat from moving into the object, as well as moving out from an object. By understanding this principle it is easy to understand why efficient insulators include a thermos, polystyrene cups, oven mitts, and double glazed windows.
Exploring Heat Transfer
This week’s assignment is performing an investigation exploring the use of different materials as insulators, and recording data to infer efficiency. Again, this is a wonderful experiment that I will use in class – for it really opens up and creates a wonderful opportunity for inquiry based questioning and performance. By giving the class a quick overview of insulation and explaining key concepts, the class is ready to go on further in their investigations. The use of real-life examples of insulators that are on hand and accessible, it really ties in foundational learning into real-life applications which make the learning more meaningful and enduring. After concrete understanding of what and why insulators are and used, this lesson has an excellent opportunity to become a great STEM lesson. Students will be asked to think about what types of material would be successful in insulating heat, and trapping heat. The use of common household materials will be on hand to choose from – with the student asked to think about the probable outcome of each, and an explanation of why. Being a holiday weekend, I was able to incorporate a few nieces and nephews to help exploring these questions at home. The objects that were offered in our research included paper towels, cotton towels, aluminum foil, plastic bag, newspaper, woolen sock, and construction paper. The experiment requires 4 identical glass jars filled with the same amount of hot water. With the use of rubber bands, the materials are attached over the warm-water filled jars, and left untouched for 30 minutes. The temperature is recorded both before the covering, and after the 30 minutes being covered. The decided materials used for the experiment were aluminum foil (that was covering Thanksgiving leftovers), a plastic bag, a cotton dish towel, and a sheet of heavy duty paper towel. The consensus of the group was split in the middle: 2 thought the cotton towel would be most efficient, the other 2 thought the foil would. We continued on and performed the experiment. The results of our inquiry are found in Appendix A. It was our conclusion, when analyzing the data – that the cotton towel we used was the most efficient in keeping heat in the glass jar. I expected this to be the outcome by remembering back to the principle of air being a very good insulator of heat, and the cotton towel had a very spongy feel to the material, indicating lots of air pockets within the fabric. When thinking about the aluminum foil, I remembered that aluminum is a great conductor of heat, and in this experiment I concluded that the foil would pull the heat from the water and warm the foil, thus letting the heat release from the jar.
The challenges I had, were that I conducted this experiment in a noisy and crowded post-Thanksgiving feast, without using precise tools for exact measurements. When performing this experiment in school, I will be quite precise in my measurement of temperature and amount of water used in each sample. I will also like to come up with samples of other materials to tests such as: glass and wood products. The other challenge I had, was that my “students” ages and abilities ranged from 5 to 14 – so I don’t really have a true idea of assessing knowledge gained from the 4. There was a lot of head shaking, and agreeing that led me to believe that I’d like to follow through with some tasks or assignments that would assure me of learning.
I look forward with working with this piece with my own students, and relating it to their own lives and the importance of understanding this principle in the natural world. I am hoping that this will be a lead in to a project I have wanted to perform for the past few years – the building of an igloo. I hope to have this project on my blog in the next few weeks!




lots of fun please lemme know what you guys are thinking and doing...point me in the right way!

J E T S!!!!!!!!