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.
