My Last Post of 2008!

Last Science class in FE8B (Tuesday) we did an experiment. Everyone was split into groups of 2 and was given a piece of aluminum foil about 15cm x 15cm. Using the aluminum foil (and nothing else including tape or glue) we had to make a boat. We put these boats one at a time into a tank of water and tried to place in as many pennies as possible before it sank. The boat that held the most pennies won.
Most of the boats were along the same idea: they were shaped as bowls. You could make a fairly large bowl out of the aluminum foil, so the boat would have a large volume. Since density is mass divided by volume, the bigger the volume is the lower the average density would be. The lower the average density is, the more pennies the boat will hold.
Some other ideas in the class were to make a raft-like shape. The aluminum foil is just in a sheet, but the edges are rolled over to create air pockets. I heard in FE8A that one group did something along those lines with 2 or 3 air pockets in it, and their boat held significantly more pennies than all the others did. This would work the same way a cruise ship does, as the boat would have a large volume because of all the air it holds, but not a large mass seeing as air has an extremely small mass. This would result in a lower average density.

In Math, we have been constructing our dream mansions. We drew an orthographic drawing of our mansion, then Mr. Foster made them into a net using a computer program. Then he printed out the net and we had to use that to make our house. We also got to incorporate art into this project by colouring our house and gluing it to an 8 1/2 x 11" piece of paper and drawing what our whole dream lot would look like. This was a fun and interesting activity as we got to learn about geometric shapes in an exciting and different context.

That's all for now.
I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday, and I will talk to you again in the new year!
Until then,
-K