Seismic Waves

Every so often it turns out that a great idea doesn't quite work out in the classroom.  Today, we tried to look at a website that featured an interactive 3-D seismic wave simulation, only to be disappointed when the pages wouldn't load.  Of course, as soon as our Science block was over, everything worked beautifully!  

Seismic Waves Simulator

(You will need Shockwave in order to see this animation)

I'm posting the link here in hopes that students and families will take a look.  Be sure to play around with the types of waves and the different views.  Zooming in allows you to see the P Waves as longitudinal waves, S Waves as transverse waves, and Surface Waves which act as both longitudinal and transverse waves.

What do you do on a SNOW DAY?

This winter has already brought lots of snow, two snow days and a 2-hour delay.  And a look at the forecast says we are not done yet!

My son, Noah, leads the way.

While constant interruptions to our schedule and curriculum can be challenging, they also give us a chance to try something new.  

A clearing near dusk

On Friday, after the snow stopped, my son, Noah, introduced me to the joys of snowshoeing.  We are fortunate to live near conservation land where the combination of forest and meadow create beautiful scenes whether walking, snowshoeing or cross-country skiing.  Our family has also used the two snow days thus far this year to learn play much-loved board games and learn new ones as well as put together jigsaw puzzles in 2- and 3-D.

How has your family used the snow days?

Data, Graphs, and Probability

We have begun our unit on Data, Graphs, and Probability.  On Friday, we worked in small groups to look at one way to collect and display data by making line plots.  By collecting data on our favorite season and the season when we were born, we focused on the difference between fact and opinion.  

While we are years away from learning how to determine adequate sample size and margins of error, 5th grade students can understand the concepts in a general sense.  Students brought up the difference in results found by different groups and the danger of generalizing small group results to the greater population.  We also learned that we need to be careful when we interpret results.

Over the next few weeks we will be collecting, displaying, and interpreting data through observations and surveys.  We will explore mean, median, mode and range with an eye to which provides us the best information about a data set.

Finally, we will spend some time on probability, looking at experiments, favorable outcomes, and how to calculate mathematical expectations.  Look for your student to move from expressing probability as impossible, less likely, equally, more likely, and certain to using fractions.

As always, students should continue to practice their multiplication and division facts to keep up their fluency.  A good exercise at home is to see if your student can name all of the factors of a number.

Waves!

What do slinkies, ropes, and wet tennis balls have in common?  

They can all be used to model waves!  Room 209 is studying waves in preparation for learning about sound and light.  Using a slinky, we modeled longitudinal waves and looked for compressions and rarefactions.  With ropes, we learned about transverse waves, noting the crests and troughs, and experimenting to change the amplitude, frequency, wavelength and speed of our waves.
 
Later, we rolled tennis balls across paper, watching them bounce off the wall.  By wetting them first, we were able to track their path going to and from the wall.  From this we determined that the angle of incidence and angle of reflection were equal!  Now that we know what happens when waves come into contact with a smooth, solid surface, we can't wait to find out when they encounter other surfaces and even other waves.  We will continue to work on our unit on waves and then apply what we've learned to sound and light.


For a model of constructive and destructive interference, check out the applet here: PHSchool Interference