Ms. England's Eager Scientists

Since returning from summer break, we have been doing serious work as scientists! Our unit of investigation is all about light and what we can see (or not see) when it is pitch black. We have been discovering how scientists out in the real world ask questions, design experiments, test and collect data, discuss and understand the data, ask more questions, and how this can go on and on until you find the answer to your first question. We started with a basic question, "what can you see in the dark?" Our first experiment around this question was to see how many shapes we could see in boxes where the light was being blocked out as much as possible.

Before we began, we discussed how scientists use fair testing to make sure that the information they collect (data) does not change from one person to another. We learned fair testing means only one thing can change at a time (for example: in this experiment the number of shapes in the box is the only thing that should change, not how close or far we are standing from the box).

We discovered from the experiment that we could see some of the shapes more clearly because more light was shining in the box. So, our conclusion was that we would need to make our room completely black in order to really find out what we can see in the dark. This opened a new question, "how do we make our room completely dark?" For this we would need to design another experiment. This time we worked in partners to do just that: 

We came up with several different designs and predictions for the best ways to make our room completely dark. Our designs including covering the windows and doors with various materials (some of us thought black paper, someone thought trash bags, another thought blankets, while someone else though brown paper). This led us to another question, "what material is best for blocking out light?" We decided that we needed to test all the materials in our designs, plus one or two others Ms. England wondered about...

We concluded from our investigation that black paper, cardboard and tin foil all block out light completely. However, someone noticed that the tin foil had ripped, so we decided that tin foil would not be the easiest to work with and we crossed it off our list. Then, we decided that the cardboard was the strongest material and would be best to use to make our room completely black. The next phase in our investigation was to get to use all the cardboard we could find to make our room pitch black! We were very excited for this!!

However, it turns out that you need A LOT of cardboard to cover all the windows. We did not have nearly enough! So, we discussed what scientists do when they have run into something that is too big to test. Turns out they make a model of the big item (a model is just a smaller version). So, our next step in the investigation is to use a model of our classroom, make it completely dark inside, and then find out what we can or cannot see. We cannot wait to discover the answer to our original question, "what can you see in complete darkness?"!  Stay tuned!