What's up for the week of September 23-27

This will be a short week for us here in the Upper School science "department."  The sixth grade will take a trip to Lake Champlain on Thursday and Friday to study the history and ecology of Vermont's biggest puddle.  We have just wrapped up a look at Champlain's creation in science.  The seventh grade will look at different forest zones as we hike up Mount Moosilauke on Wednesday.  After a restful night at the rustic Ravine Lodge at the mountain's base, we will head to the Montshire Museum to enjoy the exhibits and take part in an aquatic investigations class.  The eighth grade is learning how to calculate the density of common substances; they will visit secondary schools of interest on Friday.  Have a happy week!

The week of September 16-20

According to Dr. Art's Guide to Planet Earth, one drop of water contains 3 sextillion (that's 21 zeros!) water molecules.  An average water molecule will spend 3,160 years in the ocean but only 9 days in the atmosphere.  And a glass of water contains ten million molecules that have passed through a buffalo, one of our early ancestors, or a dinosaur.  This week, in preparation for their trip north, the sixth grade will study the formation of Lake Champlain, one of my favorite places to find water molecules.

The seventh grade has flagged their tree plots in the TGS woods and will start collecting data on the trees this week.  We are also looking at the forest zones found as one ascends a typical New England mountainside.  The zones--northern hardwood, transition, spruce-fir, balsam fir, krummholz, and alpine--can be found on the flanks of Mount Moosilauke.  We will look for them on our hike there next week.

If someone mixes your salt, sand, and dried beans together, how to you separate them without freaking out?  Ask the eighth grade!  They can tell you ways to tease apart these materials, which mixtures are heterogeneous and homogeneous, and how to purify a solution.  We hope to work with properties of matter this week and follow this up with the difference between chemical and physical change.

The week of September 9-13

The sixth grade will continue their study of Earth's water cycle, the stations where water is found, and how much water is available for human consumption.  Grade seven will establish their tree plots in the TGS woods where they will conduct surveys of the local species of trees.  Finally, the eighth graders are getting a toehold in the sometimes steep slope of chemistry through their work with matter as a general concept.