I'm new to blogging, and very excited to see how this process works out. I think the best place to start is to talk about my Methods of Teaching Science class since I have not been able to get into the field yet.I have been busy preparing for the Praxis II General and Bio tests.
We did a great lab called Ooh-bleck. Apparently this is a popular lab because I mentioned it to my girlfriend and she said she had done it before. Basically its a really cool way to teach students about the properties of matter (solid/liquid/gas). Ooh-bleck, made popular by Dr. Seuss, is this crazy cool substance that has properties equal to solids and liquids depending on what you do to it. If you tap your finger on it, its solid, if you hold it on there, it's liquid... you can pour it, but if you hit it with a hammer, it sort of shatters... weird I know, you almost have to see it to believe it. I've posted a link to an ooh-bleck lab similar to ours. If you have a kid and want to make ooh-bleck the recipe is really simple. It'll cost you around 2 bucks at the supermarket, and it is very safe (its only corn starch and water w/ food coloring).
http://education.jlab.org/beamsactivity/6thgrade/oobleck/index.html
The cool thing about the ohhbleck lab is that you can use it on just about any age group from 1st grade to high school. It really helps students hone in their skills on the scientific method, and also can help them learn about the properties of matter.
Thanks for reading!!
Mr. Nappen
I was pretty interested to hear about this Ooh-Blek. I have never heard about it before, even from Dr. Seuss. How long does it take to make this substance and does it make a mess where I am going to have to prep accordingly and clean up after?
ReplyDeleteIt takes only minutes. All you need is 1 box of cornstarch a cup of water and any color food coloring, we used green.
ReplyDeleteIt can make a mess, so instead of mixing the ingredients in a bowl, put everything in a heavy duty Ziploc freezer bag, Ziploc works best. Put the ingredients in there and mush it around with your hands. Once its all mixed together, what we did was line the lab table with a big sheet of aluminum foil so when we were done we could just fold it up and throw it out. Here's an in depth about.com article: http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryhowtoguide/ht/oobleck.htm
Hope this helps!
Mr. N