Minor Details - April 4

April 4 - 8, 2022

Investigating Flow Rate

Today we investigated the flow rate of fluids. In this photo (thanks William), you can see our experiment measuring the flow rate of molasses.

We made connections between density (the space between particles) and whether a substance would have a high or low flow rate. And we discussed factors that would affect flow rate (e.g., changing temperature, adding water, etc. )

In this video from Smarter Every Day, you can see flow rate and density at work (click here).

Making Sense of Multiplying Integers

We are making connections between what we know about multiplying (repeated addition) and what we know about positive and negative numbers.

Even though the products of (+4) x (-3) and (-4) x (+3) are both (-12), this visual helped us make sense of what each expression actually means.

Writing Reviews

On May 4, we will be going to Laura Secord Secondary School to see a live performance of "Mamma Mia". Part of the experience will involve writing a review of the musical for Drama.

We are reading reviews of movies and plays to develop criteria for a theatrical review so that we can write our own reviews.

We watched a fantastic Volkwagen commercial (you can watch it here) and will be using all 6 criteria to write our first mini review.

Density Analogy Task

Analogies are powerful strategies to help us understand new ideas by comparing them to ideas that we already understand. I used the idea of shopping to help students understand high, medium and low density.

The task for students is to use their media literacy skills to create an effective presentation that uses a unique and appropriate analogy to explain density.

Understanding Density

After our investigation into the relationship between mass and volume, we are learning that density is the number of particles (mass) in a specific volume of matter.

Thanks to 9 volunteer "particles", we modelled high density and low density to help us deepen our understanding. In the first picture, you can see the spaces between the particles are very small. This is high density. In the second picture, the number of particles stays the same but the volume has increased and the spaces are larger which means the density is low.

Now we can explain why ice floats on water!

Our next step is to apply our understanding of density to solve real-life problems.

Making Sense of Subtracting Integers

We have been working on representing integers in many different ways to make sense of what subtracting integers actually means.

If you think back to when you learned to read, you didn't just memorize "c-a-t". You saw a picture of a cat. Maybe you played with a cat. You read stories about cats. Your brain created synapses so that you had a deep understanding of cats.

We want to do the same thing with numbers. You can see in this image that we are representing integers in different ways.

Investigating the Relationship between Mass and Volume

Today we learned that mass and weight are NOT the same thing. The mass of an object refers to the number of particles in the object. Weight depends on the force of gravity acting on a mass. For that reason, a person's mass on the Moon would be the same as it is on Earth. But the person's weight would be very different because the force of gravity on the Moon is much less than the force of gravity on Earth.

We are investigating the mass divided by volume for several objects made of the same material.

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