Blog 2.8 Bruce Jr's License

     This is the final week of Genius Hour, and I've learned a lot about how to teach people. I've come to realize that it's harder to teach than it is to learn. Knowing the knowledge beforehand and then trying to make an impression on students is hard to do. In chemistry light was one of the hardest concepts to learn, and therefore, I thought it was one of the hardest to teach. Science concepts are hard to understand due to them being so complex, and yet they're important because they're involved in the world around us. 

    I've learned over the course of this Genius Hour that I wouldn't make a good teacher. I'm too good at procrastinating and often find it hard to stick with a subject that I already understand. Creating a lesson plan to teach would be difficult, and trying to get people to read and listen is even harder. Overall I believe that learning how to explain concepts to try and teach, better helps me understand the mind of a teacher. Teaching is hard and you have to know your audience, like a good speaker would. 

Blog 2.6 Bruce Jr's Science Lessons

     Week 7 of the blog that no one really looks at. This week I'm going to be explaining a spectroscope and how it shows our understanding of what light is. It splits the white light we see everyday into a spectrum of light, because white is the combination of every other color. So, the spectroscope allows us to see all of the different energy levels of the light, and it  allows us to see the heat released from a reaction or something occurring naturally, and let's us determine the energy level.

    This picture is off of google, because getting something this clear in the classroom is almost impossible. In chemistry, we used a paper towel tube with a slit in the end to copy this effect, and it then allowed us to see the rainbow of color you see here. This tool also allows us to see that light bends and can go into this slit and create a band of light. This tool allows us to see the in the world around us, light and life are all just energy moving around us. 

Blog 2.5 Bruce Jr's Science Lessons

    It's widely known in science that energy cannot be destroyed nor created, it can only be changed. Light sticks and lightning bugs are all examples of this, and they also release light in dark or dim situations. This effect is called chemiluminescence, which is basically just light being released as a result of a chemical reaction. So to help demonstrate this I made my own lightning bug solution, using bleach, water, liquid lye, and luminol. When the substance are mixed together they emit a bright blue glow for about ten seconds as you can see.

    This reaction is what happens when bonds break. When a bond is broken it releases energy, or even sometimes when a bond is formed. The compounds carrying oxygen in the reaction decompose, and allow the oxygens to oxidize the luminol all while emitting blue light. The substance in the dark appears blue, but when the lights were on it actually looked like a watered down apple juice. I'd hope for me to be able to keep using the lab so I can bring more cool experiments in, and for next week I hope to do something much cooler. See you next time!

 

Blog 2.4 Bruce Jr's Science Lessons

     Boom! Crack! Pop! All sounds that we know and interpret through our ears, but how exactly does sound work? Think of the air around you as a pudding-like substance, and sound is a vibration moving through the pudding. Sound is an electromagnetic wave that is just based off of motion. As I'm beginning to go through each of these I'm seeing I'm learning things myself as well. In order to explain sound in a demonstration I went back to a classic kid pastime.

    The cup phones that we see on Grown Ups are a perfect demonstration of how sound is just vibrations and motion. As one kid speaks into one cup, the vibrations travel along the line in-between the cups and once it reaches the other end, the vibrations are then transformed back into sound and are received as sound by the person on the receiving end. So from now on instead of thinking of sound as an invisible ghost, think of it as a liquid that flows from the mouth to the ear. The air arounds us allows sound to travel, and therefore, without air we couldn't breathe or speak.

Blog 2.2 Bruce Jr's Science Lessons

     Welcome to this genius hour's first lesson, due to a missing clamp in the science room I was unable to do this demonstration in person. However, I think I'm still gonna be able to demonstrate the science behind why, if I was able to demonstrate this in person, I wouldn't have gotten my face smashed in.

        As you can see in this grainy photo they are holding a bowling ball up to little Jimmy's face, and they are going to let it go and allow it to swing back. Now, some might think that this ball will hit the kid's face, but as I'll explain why, it doesn't. The ball, when it is held right at the kids face, has its maximum potential energy, and the most energy it will every have. When the ball begins its downward motion, the energy is turned into kinetic energy, or energy of motion. When the ball reaches the point on the other side and stops to begin its motion back, its energy is turned back into potential energy. 

    Finally, once the ball returns and gets close to the kids face it will never hit, because the ball lost energy through friction and therefore has less energy. In essence there's no way to create or destroy energy, you can only convert it.

Blog 2.1 Bruce Jr's Science Lessons

     OKAY, so for my first week of the genius hour, I'm already behind on my original plans. I was obviously too optimistic for myself, and didn't realize the preparation needed for this teaching project. Instead of already teaching a lesson I decided to work on organizing my lessons and selecting different demonstrations for them. I think throughout the week I was able to find a lot of demonstrations that could prove pints, but now I need to try and determine how I am going to explain and order them. 

    I'm really hoping to get into the lab and do my first demos next genius hour. This weeks focus will be on teaching basic mechanics of motion, so it should be a fun week and an easy one for all of my viewers. I'll see everyone next Thursday!

Blog 2.0 Bruce Jr's Science Lessons

    Hello sharks, for this genius hour I've decided to teach science, by using demonstrations and visual aids to help summarize and quickly teach developed thoughts. My main reasoning for doing this is I've always thought that science was a hard thing for most people to get interested in, but I'm hoping that I can make an easy and understandable alternative for people to enjoy and get inspired from. The process required will include a lot of help from the science department, specifically Mr. Russell and Mrs. Martin, along with research online about certain experiments. 

    Keeping my first genius hour in mind, I plan on using my new understanding of learning a new process to help my teaching of others. Science can be a massive thing to try and comprehend, so I plan on sectioning it up to create a more manageable source of inspiration. 

    The validation for my genius hour will be when I reveal the projects to the two teachers helping me. I will be giving them a grading score for each lesson, and plan on averaging the totals. Their feedback will also be a big determining force in whether I was successful or not.