Science Fair

Ready to let the car go.  After it has stopped
 moving, they measured how far it traveled.

The past several weeks, Standard 6 has been busy with experiment projects.  The goal of the project was to have smaller groups of students conduct an experiment on their own, write a lab report, create a poster about their experiment, present it to the class and share their work with the teachers during a poster fair.

The groups conducted different experiments.  Two groups explored the amount of friction created by different floor surfaces.  They released toy cars from the top of ramps and then measured how far the toy car traveled on concrete, a mat, and a carpet.  They did several trials and averaged their results.  They created a bar graph of their results, and discussed whether their results supported their hypothesis, and what experiment they could do next to further explore friction.

Two other groups explored cohesion by using a plastic pipette to see how many drops of different liquids they could fit on a Tanzanian coin.  They were very surprised that a coin could hold so many drops of water.

Pupils counted the number of drops of water,
vinegar and oil that could fit on a coin.

Other groups measured reaction times by seeing how quickly volunteers caught a dropped ruler.  Two groups compared average results for boys and girls in Standard 6, and two groups also compared reaction times of teachers to pupils in Standard 6.  They were very good at making sure that every volunteer's hands were the same distance apart and that they dropped the ruler from the same point each time so that their results were accurate!  

The last two groups explored how our ingrained ability to read interferes with the speed with which we can name colors of letters if the word spelled by the letters is a different color.  Not quite clear?  Give it a try!  Name the color of the letters of the words below.  Don't read the words.

brown

green

purple

red

Now try to name the colors of the letters below.  Don't read the words!

The volunteer waits to catch the ruler.  The
centimeter at which they catch it will tell
how quickly they react.

brown

green

brown

red

Pupils timed how long it took volunteers to name the color of
the letters of a word (not read the word).

During their experiments, pupils learned how to use plastic pipettes, had fun rolling toy cars down ramps, and asking teachers to catch rulers and name colors of letters where the word was a different color.  Not only did pupils complete the experiments with enthusiasm, teachers participated eagerly as well.

After finishing their experiments and writing their reports, they created a poster to describe what they did and what they found using the format of science fair posters.  We worked on creating reading-friendly posters and highlighting important information.  We also used colored markers (thank you Klaus and Mary!) to decorate and jazz up the posters.

On Wednesday afternoon students began their classroom presentations, and they also hosted a poster fair for the teachers in order to share what they had learned and created over the last several weeks.  As I walked through the poster fair, I was delighted to see my pupils eagerly engaged with their teachers: answering questions, demonstrating procedures, referring to and explaining their graphs, describing what they found and what they would like to do next. 

I am so proud of them and I hope you enjoy their work!   

Putting finishing touches on their posters before the poster fair.

Our academic teacher and a pupil discuss the poster in the background.