Vanessa Vihnanek

 1. How the phases of the moon occur? I think the phases of the moon occur based on the Earth's placement each day. As the Earth orbits around the sun it's a different position from the moon. That's why we see different phases of the moon.  2. What causes the seasons?  The seasons are caused by the Earth's placement around the sun. If the Northern hemisphere is closer to the sun, that causes the warmer seasons like summer. When the hemisphere is farther away from the sun that causes colder seasons like winter. 3. What causes a lunar eclipse? I don't know what causes the lunar eclipse.  Lab: This week in lecture, we focused on globes. We learned about the positioning of the earth, moon, and sun. Our seasons are caused based on the Earth's positioning around the sun. When the earth is tilted towards the sun, the countries/area on the tilt are getting stronger rays from the sun. The equator always gets a direct ray from the sun. The seasons change as the earth orbi...

 Lab:  This week in lab our big question was "how can we design a playground surface?". We worked with our groups to design a bowl to protect an egg. The bowl was manipulating the playground. My group used sand, rubber, straw, and plastic wrap to make our "playground". We layered the bowl as shown in the photo below. When we dropped the egg from one meter and two meters, the egg was protected both times. We successfully dropped it into our design without the egg breaking. I think the plastic wrap as the last/top layer on design was the best part of our design. It reduced the speed/impact of the egg hitting the bowl because it bounced off the plastic wrap to land more gently the second time. We learned that acceleration isn't just how fast you are moving but how fast you speed up. In other words, it's how quickly our speed changes. The smaller the acceleration, the smaller the force that is acting on the egg.  Pressbook:  Previous chapters of the pressbook re...

 Lab: The big question asked in lab this week was "how can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous?". We finished our discussion about slides and what effects a riders speed going down the slide. Our new big question was "what effects how long it takes a swing to go back and forth?". During this week's lab, my group and I investigated how the release angle affected the time it takes for the swing to move back and forth. We did three trials for three different release angles and recorded our results in a table. Once we found the averages for each angle, we found that the smaller the angle, the shorter the distance traveled was. This was different from our hypothesis, the higher the angle the faster it swings, because we weren't looking for the speed of the swing. We decided to focus on the time it took to swing back and forth instead of the speed.  Lecture:  During this week's lecture, we learned that rider weight doesn't affect the swings ...

 How can we support play that is exciting but not dangerous? This week in lab we worked with our groups to design and conduct our own investigation. My group chose to investigate how rider weight affects the speed of the rider going down the slide. We ended up testing six different balls. Originally we used a golf ball and a wiffle ball around the same size. The golf ball was way heavier but the differences in the speeds was small. We decided to retest the theory will four balls of the same size but different mass. We tested each ball going down the slide three times and recorded the speed for each attempt. We found the average of all three attempts and then compared the results. We found that the heavier the ball, the faster it went down the slide. When comparing with another group who picked the same topic to investigate, we found that we had similar results. Overall, both groups came to the same conclusion.  Thursday's Lecture:  In lecture we learned about velocity, fo...

Why(/how) should elementary students learn about science? Elementary students should learn about science because it teaches them critical thinking and problem solving. It allows students to explore their creativity and learn in an engaging environment. Elementary students are often very curious. Science allows them to explore their curiosity in a school setting. Their exploration in science can lead to asking questions and creating more learning experiences. They should learn science in an engaging setting where they feel comfortable asking questions.  In lab this week we worked with our groups to create an experiment. We needed to use time and speed to decide how to create a proper head start. My group decided to use chairs to have the students race 16 meters. We timed the amount of time it took each student to spin and then run the distance in the chair. Based on the meters per second, we had one of the racers start before the other so they can finish at the same time.  Thur...