The essential question we will be studying is: How is Heat Energy Transferred?

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

• use data to draw conclusions about how heat can be transferred (convection, conduction, radiation).
• explain the difference between heat and temperature.
• explain that most chemical and nuclear reactions involve a transfer of energy.
• explain the main first two Laws of Thermodynamics.

“Hey, lets crash two rockets into the surface of the moon and watch what happens!”  Imagine you just suggested that to your boss at NASA, and don’t forget rockets aren’t cheap!

That is exactly what NASA just did.  But when NASA watches what happens they use a little more technology to get a good picture of the result.

What they did.

Rocket 1 - Crash it into the dark side of a crater to produce a huge dust plume (cloud) above the crash site.

Rocket 2 - Fly it through the dust plume from the first crash, sampling the particles.  Send the data back to Earth before this rocket crashes too.

And what did they find?  Water.

You can find out more about the LCROSS Mission at NASA.

The science fair is an ongoing project throughout the Mount Washington Valley lasting until spring.  Each school will host its own celebration of the students work.  Students who are interested can go on to the Valley-Wide fair in May (click here for more information).

My 8th grade students started a blogging project last Saturday on the International Day of Climate Change at http://ccassinelli.edublogs.org/. We were inspired by the 40-day challenge from Tread Lightly (http://treadlightly.me/challenge.html). The 40-Day Challenge focuses on environmental stewardship by challenging readers to adopt or be inspired by our green commitments.

Our blog will document our class trying to make a difference. Please follow our journey from 10/24/09 until 12/2/09 and leave comments to explain what you are doing for environmental stewardship.

Thanks for participating!”

Let’s subscribe to their feed and see what this class is up to.  What could we be doing?

Science Fair is coming soon!

http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/index.php?/feeds/index.rss2

http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/rss/SNK.asp

This week we will be study the changes that happen to matter as it changes from one state to the next. We will use Molecular Workbench, a software project that allows us to model the motion of molecules. The end of the week will wrap up with glimpse of how all that we have been learning connects to climate on Earth.

See you this week in Science!