The Nervous System

5th Graders explored the Nervous System today!

Neurons are specialized cells that use electricity to send messages to and from the brain.

Neuron by Andrew

Neurons transmit messages to each other using chemicals and electricity.  There are sensors (nerves) in you hands, feet, mouth, ears, eyes and nose that send your body messages from your surroundings.  Your brain interprets these messages to help you react (by sending messages from your brain through your spinal chord (bundles of neurons) to your muscles.)

Check out this video by Schoolhouse Rock for a broad overview of the nervous system.

Today we used our sense of touch to trick our nervous system.  After we put one finger in hot water and one finger in cold water, we put both in room temperature water.  The water felt cold to one finger and warm to the other!

One finger in hot water, one in cold.

The room temperature felt hot to the cold finger and cold to the hot finger!

Then, I played a trick on students' senses.  They tasted 4 different liquids each with just a hint of flavor and then had to guess what each flavor was.

After tasting each, most guessed cherry for red, lime for green, lemon for yellow, grape for purple. 

Turns out they were all the same flavor, berry!  Sensory input from our eyes can be interpreted incorrectly in our brain because we usually associate different flavors with certain colors.

You use different parts of your brain for different activities.  Many of us have a dominant side (left or right brained.)  Your left side is responsible for logical thinking and reasoning.  Your right side is responsible for creativity.   Which way does the cat move, clockwise or counter clockwise.

 If the cat moves clockwise you are more right brained and if you see the cat turning counter clockwise you are more left brained.  Some can even switch directions!

World of Color for Smiley Faced Kindergarten

A class of Kindergartener's earned 100 smiley faces for good behavior and chose the science lab as their prize.  As a result, I got to see 28 smiley faces in my lab today!

Color is a physical property we can use to classify objects into groups.

Sometimes scientists have a hard time classifying things if they don't quite fit into categories.  Scientists put a platypus into the mammal category, but it has a bill and lays eggs!  We found objects like that as well.  How would you classify this?

                                  The platypus of color!

The primary colors (needed to make all the other colors) are RED, BLUE, and YELLOW.  We did a little color mixing to test this out!

We set 3 primary colored water cups next to each other.

 

 

 We connected them with paper towels.

 

 The water absorbed through the paper towels.

 

 

We left them overnight and they mixed in the empty cups and formed purple and green!

 

We also created a glue color creation with watered down glue, food coloring and a stick dipped in soap.

 

Check out our creations!

 

Then we created secondary colors (green, orange and purple) from primary colors in our test tubes.

 

 

We also found that black contains all the colors, and....it is possible to separate them!

Black ink finger print on a coffee filter.  Dip the bottom in a little water and voilà, primary colors!

 

 

Separated colors on the coffee filter.

Lastly we talked about white light containing all the colors of the rainbow!  We used CD's, special glasses and bubbles to break up the white light into colors!

 

We took a picture through the glasses and this is what it looked like.

 

 

Check out a favorite story book, Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Leoni displayed as a stop animation created by Lauren Chartuk.


Check out this experiment from Steve Spangler and try this at home!

Transportation in Plants

Just like our blood moves necessary substances through us, plants have a system to do that too!

The plant needs water and minerals which are absorbed through the roots. There are tubes in the roots, stem and leaves that are responsible for carrying water.  These are called xylem.


Hitting a xylophone with water tube to remember xylem carries the water!


The plant makes its food (glucose) in the leaves and needs to transport it other parts of the plant.  To transport food the plant uses a different set of tubes called phloem.

 (I think phloem for phood- yes I know you spell it food, but I know you'll remember how to spell food!) Check out this student drawing of the process.

 

 

Today we looked at the xylem tubes in celery.  After putting the plant in colored water for an hour, we could see the color travel up the stem into the leaves. 

 

We even took a xylem tube out for further exploration.

 

Plants are able to transport water because water has some special properties.  It is a polar molecule!  This creates surface tension caused by adhesion and cohesion.  Adhesion is water sticking slightly to other objects, like your finger (seeming to defy gravity.)

 
 
Cohesion is when water sticks to itself (try playing with a few drops on wax paper.)  Or check out this "skin" created on top of a graduated cylinder.

This causes capillary action, that is the tendency of water to rise in a small tube.  The water sticks to the tube and the molecules stick to each other.

When the plant is losing water through the leaves during photosynthesis, more water is pulled up from the roots in the xylem tubes using capillary action.

We mad a model plant to show the pull of water.  The capillary action moved the water up the "plant" and through the "leaf" (also separating the color black we put on the coffee filter "leaf.")

 

 

 

 

Check out a virtual transpiration lab on your own from Glenco/McGraw Hill.

virtual lab