Density and Archimedes Principle

Eureka!  The Archimedes Principle is about density and buoyancy, but this is one section of the book where the demonstrations did not look promising.  Based on the illustrations, it looked like the water would flow over the top and just run down the sides of the glass rather than collecting in the pie plate.  Maybe if I used a cup with a rim wider than the base it would work.

I thought about getting a set of density blocks for a demonstration but in the end I decided to use computer simulations instead. Both ExploreLearning and Adaptive Curriculum have several great simulations covering density and buoyancy.  PhET has one for buoyancy and another for density that are free, as is the Floating Lab.

You could also read Archimedes and the Door of Science by Jeanne Bendick along with the first chapter of this book.  The details of what happened when Archimedes figured out the principle named after him are in it as well as Fleisher's book.

More Janet Halfmann Books

I have posted reviews for each of Janet Halfmann's 2010 book releases on Love2Learn.



The first is a sweet bedtime story, Good Night, Little Sea Otter.










The second is a fun and engaging book introducing animal classification, Fur and Feathers. 

Enjoy these wonderful young science titles!

Planets at Dawn

If you get up early and can get a good view of the Eastern horizon then consider taking a look at this 4-planet show.

Journey North--Our Results

Yesterday was the dealine to submit results for the Journey North Mystery Classes.  Here is what I came up with for the 10 locations.  I include links to pages I made as to how these cities fit the final clues given.

• Perth, Australia
• Guatemala City, Guatemala
• SANAE-IV, Antarctica
• Hong Kong, China
• Mahikeng, South Africa
• Jerusalem, Israel
• Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Sarnia, Canada
• Pointe-Noire, Republic of the Congo
• Daegu Metropolitan City, South Korea

How do your answers match up?

Unfortunately, we will not show up when the answers are announced as 3 of my students came up with answers based on coordinates and did not check to make sure their locations matched all the clues.  Instead of Mahikeng we had Kimberley, instead of Sarnia we had London, and instead of Pointe-Noire we had Kinshasa.  We did not meet during Holy Week, and yesterday we had several of our group absent, and the weather was just too beautiful to sit inside for class, so I just submitted what they gave me.

What Is Wrong With PandaMania

I mentioned problems with OSV's PandaMania on the At Home Science Yahoo group and several people have asked for more details.  I wrote a lengthy blog post on my Science of Relations blog about the things I find problematic with the program.