My PBL project deals with water suspension in a mason jar.
For the ELA component of my project, I plan to make a journal
to keep track of my progress.
My journal entries are posted below.
Journal
● Late August/Early September 2013
The first step I took in the PBL process was to select a project. Mr. Dal, my physics teacher, sent each student a list of projects from which he/she could choose from. I looked up a video on youtube of each of the projects that I thought sounded interesting. A video on water suspension caught my attention. In the video, a boy filled a cup with what appeared to be icy water, covered it with a thin sheet of cardboard and flipped the cup upside down onto a table. The boy slowly removed the cardboard and lifted up the cup with a twisting motion. Left on the table was a sort of ice cube in the shape of the cup. This experiment looked so intriguing. I was really excited to try this out, although in the description of the video, the boy who performed the experiment said it took him a very long time to master it.
A few days later, Mr. Dal asked me which project I had chosen and I showed him the video I previously mentioned. After watching the video, Mr. Dal told me that what the boy did in the video was most likely impossible and that the video was probably created with special effects. He redirected me to another video on water suspension; in this video, a man places a screen over a mason jar, fills the jar with water, covers it with a card, flips the jar around and carefully removes the card. The result is that the water does not spill out as one would expect, but rather stays suspended in the jar.
My project was pretty different from how I originally thought it was going to be, but I still thought it was going to be a pretty fun experiment.
October 27 – November 1, 2013
Tasks 8 and 9 were due this week. For these tasks I created an “About My School Page” for my PBL website. On this page I included a short paragraph about the activities we have at Harmony and links to Harmony’s youtube channel and facebook page. At the bottom of the page I had to copy and paste a poem about Harmony Public Schools from the PBL resource website.
● November 7, 2013
Today I tried my water suspension experiment for the first time. Before I began, I watched the video on how my project is supposed to be done. Then, I got a mason jar from my kitchen and a screen (like the one used for windows) that my dad had. I unscrewed the rim of the mason jar and removed the tin circle that goes under the rim that acts as a lid. Using a pair of scissors I cut a circle out of the screen about the size of the tin circle from the mason jar. Next, I placed the screen circle that I cut out over the mouth of the mason jar and screwed the rim of the lid back on. Next, I filled the jar up to the top with water. Then, I cut out a square of cardboard from a box of brownie mix and laminated it with clear tape. To conduct the actual experiment I held the mason jar (filled with water) in my left hand and placed the laminated square over the opening of the jar. Second, I flipped the jar over and slowly removed the card from under the jar’s opening. The result was just as I hoped it would be: the water stayed suspended in the jar. While the jar was still upside down I tilted it and all the water spilled out. (Even though I did this over my kitchen sink, the water still got all over the floor, so I had to clean it up.)
Overall, I feel like the experiment was very successful. The outcome was just like how the video on how to conduct the experiment shows it should be. I learned that when I removed the card from under the jar, the inside of the jar was air-tight causing the water to stay suspended. As soon as I tilted the jar, the water came gushing out because the air that was holding the water in was released. Therefore, water suspension is caused by air pressure.
November 11-15
Tasks 10 and 11 were due this week. For these tasks I created a “My PBL Project Page.” This page is basically all about my project so I included an introduction, my driving question, a list of the materials I used, the procedure, and the scientific principle of my project. I took pictures and a video to post on my site. I gathered my materials and took a picture of them for the “materials” section of the “My PBL Project Page” on my site. Next, I took a picture for almost every step of my “Procedure” section. For example, when I was filling the mason jar with water. Finally, I asked my mom to record me while I turned the mason jar upside down and removed the laminated card. Thankfully the water stayed suspended like it was supposed to, so I only had to do one take. Then, I posted the pictures under their corresponding steps. I inserted the video at the bottom of the page.
Mr. Dal took 10 points off of my grade because he wasn’t able to see my video since I had posted it directly from my computer to my site.
November 25-29 2013
A few days before the Thanksgiving break, Mr. Dal told me that I was supposed to post my action video on youtube, make sure it was public, and then re-insert it onto my website. Later that day, he showed our class an example of what our “My PBL Project Page” should look like. He told us to change the format of the page to two-column, so that we could put the written part on the right side and the corresponding pictures on the right side. Additionally, we were supposed to place our action videos on the top of our pages.
During the Thanksgiving break I made these changes to my page. I had some trouble with the two-column layout because I couldn’t line up the picture on the right side with its corresponding step on the left side. I did the best I could, but I think the page looked better the way I had originally set it up.
I made sure to post my video on youtube and then re-insert it at the top of the page. Mr. Dal also wanted us to make our sites pretty, but I didn’t know how. Brandon taught me how to change the background color though, so I just changed mine to bright yellow to make it more eye-catching.