Fossils

A fossil is the remains of something living. I have learned that there are many different types of fossils including foramifera, trilobites, petrified wood, fossil amber, carbonized leaf, copralite and many more. I find each of these fossils to be very interesting in their own way from being what used to be a tree, bones or even animal dung. In class we got to make our own "fossils". We made these using a plaque and water  mixture and sand. For making the fossils we used three different mixtures varying the levels of each ingredient and a shell to place inside. In the fist cup we used a 50-50 mixture. So inside the cup we placed 40mL of the plaque mix and 40mL of sand. In this one the fossil was hardened by the end of class. In the second cup we had more sand than plaque mixture so we placed 40ml of the mix and 70 of sand. This made the combination out to be very thick. In the third cup we used more of the plaque mixture than sand so we placed in the cup 80ml of the mix and 70ml of the sand...with that  much sand the mixture was still very watery!

The fossils are now placed on the windowsill in the classroom for a couple day drying period. .......

After the drying period we began to chip away at our mixtures to get to the fossil inside. To start, our cup with more mix than sand was not hard and so it did not have a good result. Also, the cup with more sand and less mix was too crumbly to hold the shape of the shell. Our mixture that was 50-50 was perfect. It was hardened and solid. After chipping away to get to the shell we had a perfect indent in the plaster to serve as our "fossil".

Geologic Time Scale

In class we performed an activity that involved the geologic time scale. We used a blank piece of paper to draw out each era and period within to get a better visual of just how long each one was and after wards we wrote out notecards based on the eras and periods to get a better understanding of what life on earth was like during these times. Because of this activity I was able to discover when the first plants emerged, different forms of life such as land animals and fresh water fish. I was able to write down what the vegetation was like and how the continents were moving causing the climate to change. The activity was a great representation that Earth is always changing.  I thought that this was a very educational hands on activity I can see myself using in my future classroom. Now only was it fun and challenging but I now have very good study tools for the exam !

What is Science?

As stated in my prompt, the word "science" can bring many different pictures to ones mind. Weather it be a fat textbook, white lab coats and microscopes, an astronomer peering through a telescope, a naturalist in the reinforces, Einstein's equations scribbled on the chalkboard, the launch of the space shuttle, bubbling beakers and so on can all reflect some aspect of science while not providing a full picture of science ay all.
Since science has so many different facets, it is overall different from all other disciplines. Science is a self correcting process. Depending on the amount of testing and experimenting done on a topic it can alter weather the data is true, false or just altered. On many terms, what is considered a face in science, has gone through extensive texting to have become a "fact".
What makes teaching science different from other subjects? Students engage in the topic of science and learning through labs and hands on experimenting to discover different ideas in science. They have to be able to form a question, a hypothesis and gather information in order to test it and discover is there hypothesis was true or false and be able to alter the experiment to get the most accurate data possible. Not only as they learn to pass through the phases of the scientific method they have to be able to understand that a possibility with science is that is is always changing. Every science teacher seeks that moment where the light bulb goes off within a child learning science.