Term 1 Week 2

Week 2. The serious stuff starts here. (Drum Roll) Or does it?

No, actually not. For now, it is still fun and games.

On Monday, we were supposed to have lessons in the lab but apparently our lab session was meant to be on Wednesday and Mr Tan was rather upset because he had half an hour of lab period less every week. However, we still continued lessons in the classroom.

We did an experiment with the "pink monster" (pink paper with ropes hanging out as arms and legs and tape in the inside; nothing too scary about it), where we had to tug at the different legs of the pink monster and see how the ropes were connected.

For our group of 5, one problem was that the ropes kept on getting taut, and we kept on forgetting to reset it, so we got a lot of false results. Another thing was that we always forgot to take down the orientation of the monster, so we couldn't take down which leg pulled which (actually all the legs pulled each other, but because of our previous mistakes, sometimes not all the strings were moving). In the end we had to use the direction of the monster's staples and the side where its slit faced to decide its orientation.

Later, Mr Tan revealed to us that this experiment was meant to explain to us some of the limitations of Science. Some things cannot be observed on the inside, we can only understand their properties when we try out different things on them; just like how we couldn't observe how the ropes were attached since they were inside the monster: we had to use other methods to draw observations. We also learnt that there are different approaches to problems, for example, in other classes, there were pupils who pressed the fingers on the paper to "feel" the rope. Afterwards, Mr Tan showed us the ppt for lab safety ("with a heavy Singlish accent" he emphasised).

On Tuesday (today) we learnt more about the scientific method (consisting of observation, question, hypothesis, methodology, result and conclusion) as well as graphing skills. We learnt how to start a graph on a number other than 0 (so as to expand our graph) as well as to draw a best fit line. The downside of drawing the best fit line is that the line can be rather hard to draw if readings are tightly clustered or very dispersed. An accurate best fit line can only be done in some cases with the aid of a computer. We also learnt about controlled, independent and dependent variable, and had a discussion about whether variables that seem inconsequential should be kept constant.

On Wednesday, we had our lab lesson. Mr Tan showed us the apparatus in the lab and told us the safety precautions we needed to follow in the lab. We then played (safely) around with a Bunsen burner and spark gun and learnt about a luminous and non-luminous flame. In the worksheet that we were given, one of the questions was: how do you heat alcohol safely without setting it on fire? After checking with my friends, I learnt that heating it in a water bath will ensure it does not catch fire as it is not in contact with an open flame. I did a bit of research about alcohol and learnt about the flash point and stuff; rather interesting stuff), but my answer was to use a thistle something, I can't remember what and place a substance that absorbs oxygen inside. Then pour the alcohol inside. The alcohol won't burn without oxygen even if you heat it with an open flame. I wonder whether my answer is correct?