8th Grade Mass Lab
Eighth graders have been learning about the Periodic Table of the Elements.聽 To get them thinking about how elements are organized, students were asked to look at a group of alien pictures and determine characteristics they could use to arrange them in a logical manner.聽 Students used things like body size, numbers of arms or legs and numbers of hairs on top of their heads.聽 There was also a missing alien in which they had to decide its place and what it would look like.聽 This activity helped students see ways in which scientists use properties to place elements.
Students also studied mass in a lab this week. To be able to recognize how little electrons add to the mass of the atom, eighth graders used marbles and cotton balls to represent the parts of the atom.聽 They first took the mass of 6 marbles which represented protons. Then they 聽added 6 different colored marbles to represent neutrons and found the mass.聽 聽Lastly, they added 6 cotton balls to represent the electrons and found the mass of the entire atom model.聽 Students compared the mass of the different parts of their atomic model and then had to determine which element their model represented.
