Science 6 is on Fire!

In our 6th grade Science class, the candles are burning bright. As a precursor to learning firebuilding skills outside, we are learning minor fire safety as well as lots of math and scientific concepts/practices indoors. Using a candle, a glass beaker, a scale, a clock, room temperature water, and a thermometer, students are designing and experimenting with different rigs to measure the energy stored in candle wax. 

Working in pairs, we spent the first few attempts just refining our process. One important first step was to become proficient with lighting matches safely and how to behave around open flames. Taking turns and staying calm are paramount here. The students know that their ability to complete these experiments safely will indicate the level of fire we work with outside. As the work progressed, the 6th graders participated in a collective brainstorm about all the different variables that we should account for and try to keep consistent between our rigs so that our data would come from as close to identical circumstances as possible. We thought of so many aspects to control: distance from candle to bottom of beaker, whether or not we leave the thermometer in during heating, how often to measure the temperature, how used the candle is, and Oscar even mentioned that we should all start with room temperature water so that the ambient air isn't heating up the water in addition to the candle.

This week we'll be starting to take data in Google sheets, a skill that is entirely new to all the students. Using the computer to do many simultaneous calculations is a joy for so many students who thought we might be doing all the math by hand. Plus, the customization options for color, 3D, bar, pie, and line graphs are fun spots of emergent exploration. We will soon have many data points to evaluate our calorimetry experiments, and hopefully be able to repeat it outside with wood and not candles soon!