hcescience's posterous http://hcescience.posterous.com Most recent posts at hcescience's posterous posterous.com Thu, 04 Oct 2012 08:49:00 -0700 High Line History http://hcescience.posterous.com/high-line-history http://hcescience.posterous.com/high-line-history

10/4/12

4RJ and 4G will be taking trips this month to see the High Line, "New York's Park in the Sky!"  In preparation for the trip, each class learned about the history of the High Line.  Check out these video links:

A brief history: http://youtu.be/oH5rs2ktazQ

Animation of the Design of Sections 1 and 2: http://youtu.be/9o_5cbPDQoY

Since 4RJ is going on their trip next week, the students studied the High Line beam bridge structure and experimented with modeling a beam bridge. 

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Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:46:00 -0700 Prove It!!! http://hcescience.posterous.com/prove-it http://hcescience.posterous.com/prove-it

10/1/12

Ask your student to prove to you that there are 3 states of matter present in a can of soda.

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Leave your comments below!!!

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Thu, 27 Sep 2012 08:48:00 -0700 States of Matter http://hcescience.posterous.com/states-of-matter-27444 http://hcescience.posterous.com/states-of-matter-27444

Today the 4th grade students learned about the 5 states of matter.  Yes, you read correctly, there are 5 states of matter: Bose-Einstein condensate, solid, liquid, gas and plasma.  In 2001, three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their actual discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate.  S.N. Bose and Einstein had theorized about the possibility of this low energy state in the early 1920s.  

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2001/popular.html#

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Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:03:00 -0700 High Line News: Breaking ground for the final section http://hcescience.posterous.com/high-line-news-breaking-ground-for-the-final http://hcescience.posterous.com/high-line-news-breaking-ground-for-the-final

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/high-line-breaks-ground-90m-extension-str...

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Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:19:00 -0700 What's the Matter? http://hcescience.posterous.com/what-the-matter http://hcescience.posterous.com/what-the-matter

4th graders have begun talking about matter (anything made of atoms, that has mass and takes up space).  This week we focused on the difference between mass and weight.  If you tell you 4th grader that you want to lose some weight, they might just tell you to go to the moon!

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Fri, 11 May 2012 09:23:00 -0700 4th and 5th Grade Circuit Challenge http://hcescience.posterous.com/4th-and-5th-grade-circuit-challenge http://hcescience.posterous.com/4th-and-5th-grade-circuit-challenge

Ask your child to help you.  Hint: Think about series and parallel circuits.

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Part 1:

Phew!  It was exhausting work, but you just hung all the Christmas lights on the tree at Rock Center.  You are standing back admiring your handy work when all of a sudden the whole tree goes dark!  You search through the tree and realize that a single bulb has cracked and broken.  Your boss wants to replace every strand of lights.  You don't think that it is necessary.  Explain to your boss why just changing the broken bulb should restore light to the entire strand. 

 

Part 2:

Okay, problem averted.  You found the broken bulb and fixed the tree.  How can this problem be avoided next year?  Make a recommendation to your boss about a better system for lighting the tree.

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Fri, 04 May 2012 09:20:00 -0700 Yeah for Earth Day http://hcescience.posterous.com/yeah-for-earth-day http://hcescience.posterous.com/yeah-for-earth-day

Last Friday, the Healthy Hunter Committee hosted a thought provoking Earth Day assembly.  To begin, the HCES Green Team of 4th and 5th graders, led by high schoolers Penelope and Jenna, performed a skit on alternative energy and shared their video on solar energy.  Next Steve Ritz from The Bronx Green Machine gave an inspiring presentation on urban farming and growing healthy food and healthy communities. Check out Steve and his students in these two videos.

 

 

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Tue, 01 May 2012 06:08:11 -0700 Paper Clip Creations http://hcescience.posterous.com/paper-clip-creations http://hcescience.posterous.com/paper-clip-creations The paper clip take-home challenges are pouring in. It's only 9am and we have already heard a plethora of creative ideas.

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Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:18:42 -0700 4RJ Builds Series Circuits http://hcescience.posterous.com/4rj-builds-series-circuits http://hcescience.posterous.com/4rj-builds-series-circuits
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Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:38:00 -0700 Alumni Scientist http://hcescience.posterous.com/alumni-scientist http://hcescience.posterous.com/alumni-scientist

Today Michigan State University physics professor and HCES (class of 1947) alum, Walter Benenson came to present to 4RJ.  His presentation, entitled "Granny's Glasses" was a lesson in light, lenses and focal length.  Walt (as he asked to be called) asked the students if light traveled in a straight line.  To prove that light doesn't travel in a straight line, but rather, can be refracted, he showed us an image of a "broken" pencil (similar to the straw below).  

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Wtih the laser box, Walt demonstrated how light is refracted through a lens and focused on the other side.    
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Walt then gave students glasses and explained how to find the focal length of the lenses and the strength of the glasses in dioptera. 

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Walt shared his 6th grade report card and class photo with the students.  He said that when he was at HCES, there was no science taught at all!

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Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:27:00 -0700 New Species of Frog Found in NY http://hcescience.posterous.com/new-species-of-frog-found-in-ny http://hcescience.posterous.com/new-species-of-frog-found-in-ny

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46739932/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.T2FsX5jv-xI

Check out this site to hear the "throaty croak" of the Southern Leopard Frog!

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recNum=AR0034

 

 

 

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Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:31:00 -0700 Magnets Can Repel 2 http://hcescience.posterous.com/magnets-can-repel-2 http://hcescience.posterous.com/magnets-can-repel-2

4RJ explores how magnets interact with other magnets!

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Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:30:00 -0700 Magnets Can Repel http://hcescience.posterous.com/magnets-can-repel http://hcescience.posterous.com/magnets-can-repel

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Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:19:00 -0800 4RJ Tested the Strength of Magnets http://hcescience.posterous.com/4rj-tested-the-strength-of-magnets http://hcescience.posterous.com/4rj-tested-the-strength-of-magnets

4th grade students designed tests to determine how well magnets work THROUGH different objects.

Here are some of the students' conclusions:

"With what I tested, any thing more than 1cm thick would not stick.  Anything less would stick." -Matthew

"Most of my objects that I tested were not able to stick because of how thick the object is." -Dylan

"If something is too dense, magnetic forces will not be strong enough to pass through the tightly packed molecules." -Theo

"All of the objects that the magnet stuck through were less than 1cm thick." -Gigi

"Overall, the magnet sticks through light /not dense material." -Octavia

"The magnet's force will effect the object more than anything else." -Adam

"How the magnet works depends on the strongness of the magnets and the thickness of the object." -Sophia

 

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Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:04:50 -0800 Great Article: NYS had one of the oldest forests in the world!!! http://hcescience.posterous.com/great-article-nys-had-one-of-the-oldest-fores http://hcescience.posterous.com/great-article-nys-had-one-of-the-oldest-fores

http://news.discovery.com/earth/devonian-forest-mapped-120301.html

One of the earliest forests in the world was home to towering palmlike trees and woody plants that crept along the ground like vines, a new fossil find reveals.

The forest, which stood in what is now Gilboa, N.Y., was first unearthed in a quarry in the 1920s. But now, a new construction project has revealed for the first time the forest floor as it stood 380 million years ago in the Devonian period.

"For the first time, we actually have a map of about 1,200 square meters (12,900 square feet) of a Devonian forest," said study researcher Chris Berry, a scientist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom. "We know which plants were growing where in this forest, and how they were interacting."

NEWS: Fossilized, 'Pompeii' Forest Discovered Under Ash

Fossil forest

The fossilized forest floor contained three types of enormous plants. The first, known as the Gilboa tree or Eospermatopteris, was once thought to be the only type of tree in the forest; quarry workers have been carting specimens out of the area since the fossil plants were first discovered. This tree was tall and looked like today's palm trees, with a crown of branches at the very top.

But an even stranger specimen lurked in this ancient forest. Amid the towering Gilboa trees were woody creeping plants with branches about 6 inches (15 centimeters) in diameter. These giant plants, known as progymnosperms, seemed to lean against the Gilboa trees for support, perhaps even climbing into them occasionally, Berry said. (Top 10 Poisonous Plants)

"Those trees were covered in little branches which sprung out in all directions and made a sort of thicket on the floor of the forest," Berry said. "That was a big surprise."

The researchers also found a fragment of a third type of tree, lycopsids, which would later dominate the Carboniferous period from about 360 million to about 300 million years ago. They reported their findings Wednesday (Feb. 29) in the journal Nature.

Understanding an ecosystem

The new view of the ancient forest is changing paleontologists' understanding of what the landscape looked like. The earliest researchers thought the forest was in a swamp, but Berry and his colleagues, including study leader William Stein of Binghamton University in New York, now believe the forest stood in a flat coastal plain near an ancient shoreline. It was probably buried and preserved when a river channel shifted, bringing in loads of sand to cover the forest floor.

Before the forest's death, it was probably chock full of millipedes and insects, Berry said. As they grew, the Gilboa trees shed branches, which would have littered the forest floor and created a perfect habitat for creepy-crawlies.

"I've spent 20 years trying to imagine what these plants were like as individuals, and yet I really had no conception of them as an ecosystem," Berry said. "Going to Gilboa and sitting in the middle of the forest floor, you could almost see them growing out of the ground. … The fossil forest came to life in front of my eyes in a way that has never happened before."

More broadly, a deeper understanding of the forest helps paleontologists piece together the ecology of the very earliest forests on Earth. The Devonian period marks a time when plant life began to shift from small, scattered vegetation to large-scale forests, Berry said. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and during the Devonian forest boom, carbon dioxide levels may have dropped from 15 times that of today to modern levels.

The arrival of forests changed the way the whole Earth system worked, Berry said. He and his colleagues are using the Gilboa site to understand how this ecosystem flourished.

"We've gone from knowing about plants to knowing about a forest," Berry said. "That's really been the breakthrough for me."

More from LiveScience:


Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:16:00 -0800 WOW!!! The Puzzle is Completed http://hcescience.posterous.com/wow-the-puzzle-is-completed http://hcescience.posterous.com/wow-the-puzzle-is-completed Congrats to all the 2nd-6th graders who worked on the Element Puzzle! Everyone was so careful that no pieces were even lost...what a feat!

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Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:49:16 -0800 Magnets are only attracted to iron or steel! http://hcescience.posterous.com/magnets-are-only-attracted-to-iron-or-steel http://hcescience.posterous.com/magnets-are-only-attracted-to-iron-or-steel

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Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:46:15 -0800 Testing Objects for Magnetism http://hcescience.posterous.com/testing-objects-for-magnetism http://hcescience.posterous.com/testing-objects-for-magnetism
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4th graders have started a new unit on magnetism and electricity.

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Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:50:00 -0800 How do the mass, volume, and denisty of unpopped popcorn compare to that of popped popcorn? http://hcescience.posterous.com/how-do-the-mass-volume-and-denisty-of-unpoppe http://hcescience.posterous.com/how-do-the-mass-volume-and-denisty-of-unpoppe

4th graders compared the mass, volume, and density of unpopped and popped popcorn.

Adam, Daisy, Simone, Sidney and Isha shared their conclusions.

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Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:05:00 -0800 A Poem by Maya in 4th Grade http://hcescience.posterous.com/aa-poem-by-maya-in-4th-grade http://hcescience.posterous.com/aa-poem-by-maya-in-4th-grade

Science

Creative experiments

Interesting facts

Experiments galore

Non-newtonian fluid

Coke vs. Diet Coke

Energetic kids

 

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