8th Grade Mineral Identification

Use this website to follow the dichotomous key for identifying minerals.  Start with the lowest number mineral that you have and follow the key for each mineral characteristic.  If you are unfamiliar with a characteristic, look in your textbook on pages 8 through 11.

Mineral ID Website

Help Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide!

Check your Grades Online

Use this button to go directly to Snapgrades to check your grades and see if you are missing any assignments.

Donors Choose Funding Project

Attached is a link to a project that I am trying to fund in the next few months so that I can add a light emitting microscope with good working optics and a USB camera to show the class what is being looked at through the lens.  This allows the whole class to see the same image at the same time -- this is one of the most effective ways to introduce a class to the world of microscopy.

With your help our class can narrow their view of the world and at the same time open up new discoveries. 

Which Branch of Science is 7th and 8th Grade Most Interested in?

These are the areas of science that 7th and 8th grade students selected as being areas of interest.  I will be posting some ideas of project topics for each area soon.  If you would like to change the area (branch) of science that you would like to focus on, let me know so that I can help you in your new area.

Forencics
Archeology
Astronomy
Nuclear Physics
Biology
Geology
Zoology
Medicine
Marine Biology
Civil Engineering
Cardiology
Astrophysics
Electrical Engineering
Bacteriology
Cryptozoology
Botony
Opthamology
Microbiology
Musicology
Physics
Structural Engineering
Oceanography
Chemistry
Sociology
Computer Science
Paleontology
Food Science
Aerodynamics
Cosmetic Chemistry
Numerology
Entomology
Meterology
Hydrology
Mycology
Fluid Dynamics

Science Fair Resources

We are now starting to define the branch of science you are most interested in and the general field within that branch that you might want to pick your science fair topic about.  Here are a list of online resources that can help you.

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/
http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/category0.html

Science Fair Resources

It has been 100 years since McCall opened it's doors to students.  Alot has changed in our world since then.  Important scientific discoveries over the last 100 years:

• 1912 - Alfred Wegener: Continental drift
• 1912 - Max von Laue : x-ray diffraction
• 1913 - Henry Moseley: defined atomic number
• 1913 - Niels Bohr: Model of the atom
• 1915 - Albert Einstein: theory of general relativity - also David Hilbert
• 1915 - Karl Schwarzschild: discovery of the Schwarzschild radius leading to the identification of black holes
• 1918 - Emmy Noether: Noether's theorem - conditions under which the conservation laws are valid
• 1924 - Wolfgang Pauli: quantum Pauli exclusion principle
• 1925 - Erwin Schrödinger: Schrödinger equation (Quantum mechanics)
• 1927 - Werner Heisenberg: Uncertainty principle (Quantum mechanics)
• 1927 - Georges Lemaître: Theory of the Big Bang
• 1928 - Paul Dirac: Dirac equation (Quantum mechanics)
• 1929 - Edwin Hubble: Hubble's law of the expanding universe
• 1929 - Lars Onsager's reciprocal relations: also called Fourth law of thermodynamics
• 1934 - Clive McCay: Calorie Restriction extends the maximum lifespan of another species Calorie_restriction#Research_history
• 1943 - Oswald Avery proves that DNA is the genetic material of the chromosome
• 1947 - William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain invent the first transistor
• 1948 - Claude Elwood Shannon: 'A mathematical theory of communication' a seminal paper in Information theory.
• 1948 - Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger, Sin-Itiro Tomonaga and Freeman Dyson: Quantum electrodynamics
• 1951 - George Otto Gey propagates first cancer cell line, HeLa
• 1953 - Crick and Watson: helical structure of DNA, basis for molecular biology
• 1964 - Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig: postulate quarks leading to the standard model
• 1964 - Arno Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson: detection of CMBR providing experimental evidence for the Big Bang
• 1965 - Leonard Hayflick: normal cells divide only a certain number of times: the Hayflick limit
• 1967 - Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish discover first pulsar
• 1984 - Kary Mullis invents the polymerase chain reaction, a key discovery in molecular biology
• 1995 - Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz definitively observe the first extrasolar planet around a main sequence star
• 1997 - Roslin Institute: Dolly the sheep was cloned.
• 1997 - CDF and DØ experiments at Fermilab: Top quark.

Will YOU be the next to discover something new in our world??

7th and 8th Grade Unit Introduction

Welcome to the 2009 - 2010 school year!  Here are the topics which we will study during the first unit:

7th Grade:

Scientific Method
Classification
The Evolution of Living Things
Cells: The Basic Units of Life
The Cell in Action
Heredity

8th Grade

Scientific Method
The Properties of Matter
States of Matter
Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures
Introduction to Atoms