Classroom Buzz

Mrs. Heggemeier's Marketing students just wrapped up their end of the semester project: Food Truck Wars. The process sounds simple: students create ideas for possible food trucks, and then narrow the options to 5. They split up, and then the real competition begins! As a team, they need to design a logo, come up with a slogan, and create a full menu. But that's just an opening act to this "war". In order to promote their food truck as the best, they have to also market it. This involves designing 30 second radio commercials, social media posts, an actual truck - wheels and all - and settle on a theme song for their truck.

Emma and Makenzy (above) and Olivia (below) are hard at work designing their trucks.

Best Truck: "Cake Bake"

Best Food and Best Social Media Post: "Second Hand Smoke"

Keeghan creates food truck specials.

Kristina and Jaiden work to construct their "Sweet Nash - Peanut Butter Dash" truck. Kristina said, "The best part of the project was the process of creativity and designing the food truck from giant boxes."

If you have all of the glue guns, no one else can build their food truck. It's called strategy.

Best Theme Song: "Tater Up". Enjoy their song "Potato, Potato" below.

Best Radio Commercial: "Crab Applez". This was also Bennet's Birthday, so sampling food for the trucks turned into a real treat!

Mole Day, celebrated annually on October 23 from 6:02 a.m. to 6:02 p.m., commemorates Avogadro's Number (6.02 x 10²³), which is a basic measuring unit in chemistry. Mole Day was created as a way to foster interest in chemistry.

Chemistry Molympics is an event for Chemistry students to test their lab skills in areas such as estimation, measurement, dimensional analysis and problem solving. Students love it! This year, 157 schools representing approximately 9,203 students in 34 states, 4 provinces, and 12 different countries competed in the five-event Chemistry competition to celebrate Mole Day.

This year, NCHS students won local Gold, Silver and Bronze awards. For all of you aspiring Chem students out there, here are the cool ways current Chemistry students competed:

Event 1: Goal: Using the average number of tally marks made by your team in 1 minute, calculate how long in years it will take to make one mole (6.02x10²³) of tally marks.

Event 2: Goal: Using disposable water bottles filled with 6 moles of water, successfully flip the maximum number of moles of water in 2 minutes. Use the total moles successfully flipped to calculate the total number of water molecules flipped.

Event 3: Goal: Estimate the mass in grams of 1 mole of Aluminum and 1 mole of a second metal as accurately as possible, without going over. Balances are NOT allowed. AND In one sentence, explain what is the same & what is different about one mole of each of these metals.

Event 4: Goal: In the shortest time, complete 6 Sit-ups, 02 Side Steps, 10 Push ups, 23 Jumping Jacks (Avogadro's Number)This is a Four-member tag-team relay event.

Event 5: Goal: Measure the height in centimeters of the tallest tower of #2 rubber stoppers that you can build. Use the tower's height to calculate the height of one mole of stoppers in meters.

Gold Medal Team: Mady's Mafia - Paityn, Lauren, Mady, and Reese

Silver Medal Team: Dumb and Dumber - Kaden and John

Bronze Medal Team: The Nuggets - Abby, Quentin, Mia, and Kamryn

Did you know that the junk drawer in your house can be used for educational purposes? Life / Earth Science students recently put that theory to the test by creating large representations of the parts of the cell using scraps, and the results spoke for themselves.

The cells and keys look pretty complete!

It's all coming together according to plan...

Life / Earth Students are also going beyond the junk drawer to apply their knowledge by learning how to observe the cells of different items on a microscopic level.

Image credit: Mrs. Bergmann

Did you know there are 12 different tissue types found in the body? Mr. O'Rear's A & P students spent some time applying their knowledge to identify those cells under the microscope.

Emma and Tailer try to draw the cells they observed, while Zoe takes a crack at identification.

Peyton confidently identified this slide as "skin cell #10."

Is it possible for two people to use a microscope at once?

Chemistry I and II students participated in the Flame Test lab last week to look at the different colors emitted by ionic compounds as heat was applied.

This video shows Chem II looking at Copper (II) Chloride burning through a spectroscope. Click the video and checkout the cool color patterns on the side of the tube!

Chem II students and Mr. Miller with their spectroscopes.

Coming in with a time of 7.04 seconds was Paige, Mady, Jill, Emma, Valerie, and Daci.

Gravity is the BOSS. To learn more about the science behind this, check out "Gravity & Free Fall" from Fuse School. Or enjoy "Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty while you enjoy the rest of the Classroom Buzz page.

Mrs. Bergmann's Life/Earth Science students have been practicing measurements using two important tools: the metric system and an electronic balance scale. It looks like everything is fair game to get weighed and measured.

The metric system is a snap for Brendan Frieman and Sawyer Price (left), and Logan Roesner and Dylan Hicks (above). Serious question: How much DOES the average pencil bag way in metric units?

Click to view the video of Isaac Wrzesinski's vision of Jamestown (above). Nate Williams submitted a bird's eye view of his Jamestown that shows an attempt to match archaeological remains of the site.

U.S. History students under the guidance of Mrs. Goostree had the task of planning how they would lead the Jamestown colony to a more successful survival outcome than the fate the colony met in the short term after their arrival. Students also had to design what they saw as a successful fort. Take a look at the digital and physical projects these visionaries submitted.

Tinkercad was also a popular choice for students to create 3D models, like the one above designed by Nick Davis.