hcescience's posterous http://hcescience.posterous.com Most recent posts at hcescience's posterous posterous.com 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 12:02:00 -0700 Star Maps and More http://hcescience.posterous.com/star-maps-and-more http://hcescience.posterous.com/star-maps-and-more

With Nature's Classroom around the corner, 5th grade students have been learning about stars and how to use a star map to locate stars in the night sky.  This week students in 5Me experienced the StarLab (5Mc will do this next Friday) as a sneak preview to what they will observe in the very dark night sky of Connecticut.

Here's an example of a star map.  The students received a slightly different version at school.  Ask you child about the proper way to hold a star map!

Sept_Star_Map.pdf Download this file

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Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:30:00 -0700 5th Graders Staring at the Sun http://hcescience.posterous.com/5th-graders-staring-at-the-sun http://hcescience.posterous.com/5th-graders-staring-at-the-sun

Today we began our Astronomy unit with the study of the sun.  Ask you student about some of the fun facts that we spoke about. 

Sun

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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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Fri, 04 May 2012 09:17:00 -0700 5th Grade Circuitry http://hcescience.posterous.com/5th-grade-circuitry http://hcescience.posterous.com/5th-grade-circuitry

Ask your 5th grade student about series and parallel circuits!  Which type of circuit is shown in the illustration below?

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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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Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:34:00 -0700 5Me is Turned on Their Heads... http://hcescience.posterous.com/5me-is-turned-on-their-heads http://hcescience.posterous.com/5me-is-turned-on-their-heads

Today 5Me explored the science of compasses.  Ask your student how a compass works.  Here's a hint: The needle of a compass is a magnet. Red is north and white is south.

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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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Thu, 08 Mar 2012 06:12:00 -0800 Thursday Had Flare http://hcescience.posterous.com/second-biggest-flare-of-the-solar-cycle http://hcescience.posterous.com/second-biggest-flare-of-the-solar-cycle

5th graders investigated the connection between solar flares and Earth's magnetic field.  We focused on the Aurora Borealis.  Take a look at some of the information we used in class...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/07/148170132/sun-sends-solar-flar...

aurora_borealis_explained.pdf Download this file

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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
IMG_3070.MOV Watch on Posterous

4th graders have started a new unit on magnetism and electricity.

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Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:32:00 -0800 5th Grade Discovery Center http://hcescience.posterous.com/5th-grade-discovery-center http://hcescience.posterous.com/5th-grade-discovery-center

Today the 5th grade investigated topics of interest. 

Here are some of the explorations that took place:

* Identifying and classifying rocks and minerals

* Researching elements and putting together the 1000 piece periodic table puzzle

* Observing and learning about the monarch, viceroy and swallowtail butterflies

* Understanding what makes food "organic" and if organic food or locally grown food is better for the environment

* Researching climates of the world

* Making sense of the physics equation for acceleration

* Researching penguins and pandas

* Learning about holograms

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Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:05:00 -0800 Take Home Challenge #2: HCES Pigeon Watch http://hcescience.posterous.com/take-home-challenge-2-hces-pigeon-watch http://hcescience.posterous.com/take-home-challenge-2-hces-pigeon-watch

In the wild, all members of a species usually look similar. Robins, for example, all have gray backs and red-orange breasts. All crows are black. But the pigeons we see around the world are a different story. They show remarkable color variation, just like cats and dogs. Why? They are all descended from the blue-bar Rock Pigeon (see “color morphs” page).  For hundreds of years humans bred pigeons just for their colors, homing instincts, or racing abilities. 400 years ago many of these special breeds escaped into the wild and became the ancestors of the pigeon flocks that we see today.

Wild pigeons adapted to life in cities, in parks, on beaches, and on farms, and their populations continued to have individuals of many different colors. 

Pigeon_Poster_Take_Home_Challenge_2.pdf Download this file
Take home challenges are completely optional and we invite anyone to participate.  Anyone who completes all of the challenges this year will receive a special science prize.  The challenges can be found hanging on the science room door!

 

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Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:43:00 -0800 Alfred Wegener: Continental Drift Theory http://hcescience.posterous.com/alfred-wegener-continental-drift-theory http://hcescience.posterous.com/alfred-wegener-continental-drift-theory

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5th graders began to learn about the life and ideas of Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), the man who coined the word, "Pangea," and proposed the Continental Drift Theory. 

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Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:27:00 -0800 Black Swallowtail Emerges! http://hcescience.posterous.com/black-swallowtail-emerges http://hcescience.posterous.com/black-swallowtail-emerges

In November, a 4th grade student brought a chrysalis into science.  He identified it as a black swallowtail.  We put the chrysalis into a butterfly tent and waited and waited and waited.  Typically a black swallowtail spends 9-11 days in the chrysalis, so after more than 1 month we had given up hope.  THEN...this morning as Ms. Stearns and I were teaching the 3rd grade, we noticed a beautiful black butterfly fluttering around the tent...It's a BOY...WOW!  It's too cold to release it outside, so we are working to create a habitat in the classroom.  If anyone wants to donate a small plant of fennel, carrot, or parsley, please bring it to the science room ASAP.

 

http://www.butterflygardeningandconservation.com/butterfly/st/black.php

 

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Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:57:00 -0800 New Science Notebooks http://hcescience.posterous.com/new-science-notebooks http://hcescience.posterous.com/new-science-notebooks

Students are slowly transferring their working into their new science notebooks.  The new notebooks are structured to have many layers of organization that will help the students keep track of their work and keep a record of the concepts covered.

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Thu, 03 Nov 2011 13:35:00 -0700 Take Home Challenge http://hcescience.posterous.com/take-home-challenge http://hcescience.posterous.com/take-home-challenge

Just a reminder that the Take Home Challenge is due tomorrow.  Each child should bring his or her display board to the science room at some point during the day tomorrow, November 4th.  I am so excited to see all of the cool experiments that have been going on for the last month!!!

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