What's in the Box?

Due to the many absentees from class today, we have a special guest blogger...none other than the undisputed champion of GBS honors chemistry...Mr. L!
The first part of class was spent discussing the test that was taken on Thursday (9/23). If you were not here, please feel free to come in and see you test. Just let me know what time would be best for you.
The rest of class was spent as an introduction to the next unit. See the moodle site for the unit objectives and calendar.
Mr. Lieberman first showed us his "think tube"...amazing, but how does it work.

the answers

That does not look like a black box!

We then worked on the black box activity. The students were asked to figure out the "maze" that was inside the "obstertainer" by using the marble that was inside. The only rule was that we could not open the "boxes". The students used many different techniques to visualize what was inside the "boxes", but still came out frustrated because they wanted to know the right answers. After about 5 minutes of playing, we came back to the front of the room and discussed how this relates to the model of the atom. The point was made that, we believe that atoms exist and so do the parts inside (protons, neutrons, electrons) but we can not observe them directly. Lab data and experimentation has to be used in order to draw conclusions about what cannot be seen. From this we can start to build models of matter. So what is the process of discovering the insides of atoms. The evolution of the atom starts with the ancient Greeks as they were the first to use the idea of the atom. This concept came from the philosopher Democritus It was noted that the greek model of matter was not very good because now data was used to support it.

Atomic history day #1

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This is as far as we got and the discussion will continue on Monday. Please make sure that the WebAssign reading sheet is completed for Monday.
Have a great weekend! The next scribe will be Amar B.