General Delk's Army: Day 94- Old Faithful

Friday, January 20, 2012

Day 94- Old Faithful

Old Faithful is a famous geyser that is located in Yellowstone National Park. At different intervals during the day, the geyser will erupt by spewing between 3,700- 8,400 gallons of boiling water high into the air. (the water is heated from under the Earth's surface)

Check out the video!

While this natural phenomenon isn't really a physical or chemical change in matter, unless you count the boiling water and subsequent steam arising from it, it's still fun to watch it erupt.

It was with the idea of things exploding/ erupting that Mr. Russell and I combined our classes again to experience another science experiment!

This little experiment was very popular with the guys I knew in college. They would go into the parking lot and create Diet Coke rockets. Being as Mr. Russell was once a college guy, I naturally assumed that he was familiar with this activity. Since we didn't get to see a 'good' explosing yesterday, we figured we owed it to the kids today. Check it out!

Crazy Wacky Scientist

a.k.a. Mr. Russell

Click {HERE} or watch it below!

We did a few more, with the same results. As a group we discussed what would happen with larger bottles of Diet Coke, what would happen if we added more Mentos, what would happen if we added resistance (in the form of a bottle top), and we tested them all!

Here we added resistance.

Notice that the bottle cap didn't stop the gas trying to get out. I shudder to think what would have happened with more Mentos! It created a nice sprinkler system, though!

Here we added 2 Mentos instead of 1.

More height and more bubbles!

Last, but not least, we used the last 2-liter of Diet Coke and added 5 Mentos. This was what we were waiting for!

Good height on this one! Yea!!

When I got home today and told my husband what we did today his words were, "I wish you had told me what you were going to do, I could have built you a rocket!"

I had completely forgotten that he had been one of those college guys in the parking lot so many years ago! That and the fact that he's a mechanical engineer makes him the perfect man to build my class the rocket we've been waiting for. Just wait, kids! Our day of rockets will come soon!

On to a different topic- Verbs.

During small groups, the students at their tables were given a fun assignment- cut and paste!

Each student was given a magazine or school supply catalog (the ones we teachers get every week and usually throw away) and was told to find pictures of people, cut them out, paste them to construction paper, and use verbs to tell what the person is doing. Fun was had by all!

Of course, before doing this activity, my students insisted on singing the Verb Rap- complete with watching the VIDEO.

Rewards Plus pictures- for students who earned a treat with their good behavior all week. My students voted and chose to do games and such with their well deserved free time.