Thursday, January 20, 2011

Activity 1 - 1/20/11

Reflect on the expansion of water and salt water experiments you and your classmates performed.  What are some of the interesting results and struggles with this experiment. 
I found this activity pretty interesting, however, slightly predictable.  I knew that water with the most salt was not going to freeze as quickly as the control, if at all.  I did think it was cool to see the differences in the control (no salt), the water with 1tsp, and the water with 3 tsp and how they froze or turned to slush.

The thing about this experiment that I found the most difficult, was measuring the expansion.  I wish I would have bought the plastic see-through cups so I could have measured before and made a starting line and then it would have been a little easier.  Instead I used plastic colored cups that were slightly funny shaped, with a few curves and it was difficult to see a difference. 

Relate your thoughts on this experiment to the scientific question "Is the earth warming?"
The greenhouse effect is the idea that gases in the atmosphere is the reason the temperature gets hot, and can become freezing.  The gases trap the air such as a greenhouse for plants.  In the study of the greenhouse effect, there is no control unlike our experiment. 

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/greenhouse.html

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