The Newsletter for Science
in Motion at Susquehanna University
Volume VII Issue 6 February 2008
Director's Column
To ensure the continued high level of service offered by SU-SIM, I will accompany each of the Mobile Educators on one or two visits during the next few months. My presence will not interfere with your SIM visit in any way. I will ask MEs to give the teacher receiving the SIM visit advanced notice so that my presence is not a surprise. Thank you for your cooperation.
To better serve biology
teachers, we have divided the biology experiments into categories
administered by Madge Schworer and categories administered by Greg Stout.
Madge will handle requests for experiments under the categories
of Biochemistry/Macromolecules, Cell Biology, DNA/Genetics/Genetic
Engineering, Forensics, Health/Human Biology and Digital Microscopy. Greg
will handle requests for experiments under the categories of Ecology,
Microbiology, and Plants. When you request a lab, please contact
the ME responsible for that experiment.
Madge Schworer, Biology Mobile Educator Says…
Brrr… Winter is here! The Bio van calendar has been filled this month with biotechnology visits. AP Biology students at Shamokin High School with Bob Hartman and at Lewisburg High School with Jeremy Lauver were successful in producing glowing bacteria in the lab pGLO: Bacterial Transformation. Both classes also worked through Electrophoresis of Lambda DNA Digests to complete both sections of the AP molecular biology lab. Al Zelnick’s Biology and AP Biology students from Line Mountain High School extracted proteins from several species of fish and separated those proteins using polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis in the lab Something’s Fishy about Evolution to determine relatedness of species. Finally, AP Biology students from Central Columbia High School taught by Dana Hock worked through GMO Investigator PCR. In this lab, DNA is extracted from various foods containing corn or soy products, PCR is used to amplify GMO-associated sequences, if present, and the PCR products are analyzed through polyacrylamide-gel electrophoresis. Both classes worked carefully through the 3-day lab and were rewarded with gels showing the presence of GMO sequences in several foods. In the only Vernier lab this month, Tri-Valley biology students taught by Pam Ulicny used beet cubes as a means to assess the damage to cell membranes caused by a variety of salt concentrations, detergents, and pH. The absorbance of the pigment released from the beets following incubation was read using the Vernier colorimeter to quantify this damage.
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Lewisburg High School students inoculate transformation |
Central Columbia students extract DNA from soy flour |
Loans for this month included Leica microscopes to Deb Kurtz at Milton High School, digital scopes and the Human Chromosome Spread lab to Dan Smith at Juniata High School, and the Vernier labs Photosynthesis and Respiration and AP Photosynthesis (using DPIP) to Al Zelnick at Line Mountain High School. My visit calendar for the spring semester is full, however loans are still available and schedule changes do sometimes occur so please email me if you are interested in SIM services. Greg and I may also be able to coordinate to bring SIM to your classes.
Jaclyn Todd, Chemistry/Physics Mobile Educator Says…
I hope that your first month of
the New Year was a pleasant and exciting one! At SIM, we began our month with
our annual winter workshop. It was fun working with those of you who could
attend the physics sessions of our winter workshop. We began the workshop
experimenting with Newton’s Second Law to determine the relationship
between force, mass and acceleration. We also took a look at Newton’s
Third Law to observe the directional relationship between force pairs. In
the afternoon, we worked with our digital cameras and did the lab Ball
Toss with Video Analysis where the teachers collect position, velocity,
and acceleration data as a basketball travels straight up and down. With our
newly developed Video Analysis the teachers were able to videotape themselves
doing the experiment. They then coordinated the lab graph generated through
LoggerPro with their actual real-time video so they could watch what happened
graphically as the lab progressed. It’s very interesting. We ended the
day exploring projectile motion. The teachers were able to accurately predict
the impact point of a ball in projectile motion. I hope the attendees enjoyed
the featured labs and learned more about our program and equipment.
We also held our first Physics Olympics this year at SIM. The featured events were a distance and a velocity competition using fan cars that students made themselves. Physics students were challenged to design a car that would race the course at the fastest speed and to the furthest distance using only a 9V battery and a small DC motor. They did a wonderful job. Congratulations to the winners!
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| Williamsport teacher Clark Sarge and his winning physics students. The Shark Car placed first overall in the distance event in the Physics Olympics. Congratulations! |
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John Hernandez of Sunbury Christian High School and his students “had a blast geocaching” with our GPS units. He says that it is “definitely a cool activity to do and the kids were loving it.” The basic idea is to have caches set up all over the world by different people. The locations of these caches are then saved on the Internet. The students use the location coordinates from the GPS’s to find the caches. They are then given various rewards and asked to leave something for the cache. The GPS units and the scavenger hunt lab then made their way over to Bloomsburg High School’s Joshua Greene. I was then off to Selinsgrove High School to visit the chemistry students of Randy Moyer. The students performed the lab FTIR of Organic Liquids. His students used our Fourier Transform Infrared spectrophotometers to examine organic compounds using Infrared Spectroscopy. Next was a trip over to Shikellamy High School where the students of Colleen Ruths put our Vernier light sensors to use. They did the lab Polarization of Light where they measure the transmission of light through two polarizing filters as a function of the angle between their axes and compare it to Malus’s law. They also performed the lab Light, Brightness and Distance where they determine the mathematical relationship between intensity and the distance from the light source. Karen Avery used our Vernier pH sensors to perform her version of the popular lab Acid Rain. In this lab, students generate three gaseous oxides, simulate the formation of acid rain by bubbling those gases into water and then measure the pH of the three resulting acidic solutions.
You can begin to send in your reservation forms for the spring semester now! Many of you are beginning to request drop-off’s as you become well-rehearsed and familiar with our labs. Due to limited computers, you’ll want to get those reservation forms in soon to ensure you reserve the equipment. Feel free to e-mail me about any specific days or labs. Have a great 2008!
Greg Stout, Mobile Educator Says...
After completing some follow-up work to the SIM Winter Workshop, it was time to get back to water quality monitoring of Susquehanna River tributaries. On my birthday, January 7th, I drove to Little Fishing Creek to meet with teacher Joshua Greene and his Bloomsburg Christian School students. They surprised me by singing Happy Birthday to me as they exited the van to begin our stream sampling and testing (was I blushing just a little?). The weather was gorgeous that day and I was grateful to be outside enjoying good company and the beauty of my surroundings. The very next day took me to Gordon, PA, as teacher John Slotterback and his North Schuylkill students met me at the Little Mahanoy Creek. It was again shirt sleeve weather and we had a fun yet productive day in the stream conducting our measurements and collecting our required samples. Karen Avery’s Milton High School students braved weather more typical of the season when we met at Limestone Run on January 16th. The students efficiently broke into three teams to collect water samples, do flow rate measurements and calibrate equipment to do water quality analyses. They did a great job performing their assignments but were not unhappy when it was time for them to get back into the (warmer) van. I traveled to Milton High School again on the 23rd to drop off labs for Mrs. Avery. These included Wards Bacterial Sensitivity and Gram stain labs as well as Vernier’s Acid Rain (Chemistry) lab.
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| North Schuylkill teacher, John Slotterback, and his students. At right a North Schuylkill student conducts flow rate measurement. |
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Please note the changes Dr. Thomas has mentioned in her article regarding the distribution of labs between Madge and me, and continue to check our Web site for available dates. We will do whatever we can to service your requests.
Experiment of the Month
Newton’s Law
This month’s featured lab focuses around a topic that all physics educators teach at some point of the year-Newton’s Laws. In the lab Newton’s Second Law, the students will use our Vernier Force Sensors and an Accelerometer to measure the force on a cart simultaneously with the cart’s acceleration. They will also vary the total mass of the cart by simply adding mass. Students will be able to determine how the net force on the cart, its mass, and its acceleration are related. Students discover for themselves if a cart’s velocity is related to the force they apply or if the force just changes the velocity. They also explore what the mass of the cart has to do with how the motion changes.
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Screen shot of data from "Newton's 3rd Law" experiment. |
Vernier Dual-force Sensor |
Newton’s first two laws
of motion concern only individual objects. However, the third law describes
an interaction between two bodies in terms of the action and the reaction.
In the lab Newton’s Third Law, students will use two Force Sensors
to see firsthand what happens if they pull on someone else’s hand
with their hand. As their hand pushes or pulls on their partner’s
hand the Force Sensors records those forces. The action is the force applied
by one hand and the reaction is the force that is applied by their partner’s
hand. Together, they are known as a force pair. From the experiment and
the graphs produced, it is easy to show students how the forces are related
by Newton’s third law. This is a very short lab that could be easily
done in the same week as Newton’s Second Law. These labs would be
an educational and fun addition to a typical Newton’s Law unit.
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Winter workshop teachers Beth Miller and Larry Ryan experiment with Newton's Second Law. |
Save a Tree
If you wish to receive
this newsletter in electronic format, please send us your e-mail address at
sciencemotion@susqu.edu or phone
us at 570-372-4779.
Courtney
Thomas
Director, Science in Motion
570-372-4778
thomasc@susqu.edu
