5/2 qod

Why can't we do fission or fusion with iron?

--ch

05/01 Wendt

                     For Tuesday of week 05/30 we had to turn in the lab on pages 217-220.  We also learned a little about nuclear waste disposure, which involved watching a bit about Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where they store nuclear waste in tunnels deep inside the mountain.  Mrs. Coats-Haan also talked about superfund sites, which are sites that are abandoned due to the presence of hazardous waste.  One that is close to us is the Feed Materials Production Center site, which contains radioactive wastes such as Uranium and Thorium.  With that said, there were really not any official notes taken on this day. The main thing we did today was work on The Particle Lab web quest, pages 213-215, which is due 05/02.  You do not need to learn anything prior to the lab, and you just find the information given on the website, which has its web address on the worksheet.  On the website you learn a lot about the subatomic particles you have probably have never heard of, which include particles in the lepton group and quark group. You also learn a little more about the fundamental forces, which are the weak nuclear, strong nuclear, electromagnetic, and gravity.  Although you should be acquainted with them after our force unit, the web quest goes more in depth, going over the forces’ carrier particles and what the forces are responsible for.  Overall the day was pretty ordinary.  There was no giraffe copulation, and only one person was found to be on fire. 

5/1 qod

What is a superfund site and where was the nearest one located?
--ch

4/30 qod

Describe the precision of carbon dating.

--ch

4/27 qod

How will we know the difference in alpha particle tracks and beta particle tracks when we look in the cloud chamber?

-- ch

Mukherjee 4/26

At the beginning of class we turned in the paragraph about whether or not we supported nuclear energy. Then we took a cell phone poll to see how much radiation the majority of us had. Afterwards, we took notes on x-rays, radioactivity, the nucleus, quarks, leptons, isotopes and the cause of radioactivity. In the middle of all that we heard a song about quarks which included Mrs. Coats-Haan's favorite part, giraffe sex, at the end. She also showed us a copy of the Wizard of Quarks and explained what the four witches and the flying monkeys represented. At the very end, we started the penny experiment on half-lives where we counted the number of people who flipped heads each round. Throughout class, Mrs. Coats-Haan lit matches every time a person got an answer right in class, which thanks to Chris and Lauren was a lot. It was a miracle the smoke detectors didn't go off.

Q.O.D. Explain the analogy with the four witches.

I don't really remember a whole lot about the witches, except that they were representing four forces. The fat one was representing gravity (because the more mass something has, the more effect gravity has on it) and there was a creepy one that I think was representing weak nuclear. The weak nuclear witch was on the same powerpoint slide as the electromagnetic witch because originally, people thought electric and magnetic forces were separate, but now they're classified as one force. In the same way, some scientists think that weak nuclear forces may be a part of electromagnetic forces. I don't remember the appearance of the witch who represented strong nuclear.