Late start today, so we didn't have a ton of time.
We jumped immediately into Activity 12's analysis questions. The first question table groups worked on together; many groups agreed that the liver in their model was not accurate. We discussed why that might have been (lack of knowledge, lack of materials, lack of space) and said that all models have their limits. The second analysis question students answered on their own. We discussed how many students drew their heart in the wrong position (on the side/shoulder rather than closer to the middle) and that many students had organs in their first picture that we didn't even build. We discussed whether it would be possible for us to build all the organs inside our model, but most agreed the model would be far too packed and chaotic. So the question then came up...if models are inexact and often only tell part of the story, why bother? Students said that despite their shortcomings, models are helpful because they are visual representations of complex things that we don't usually get to see with our own eyes. This discussion provided the answer to analysis question #3.
The second half of the period we worked on Activity 14 Part 1. We did an experiment by dropping a tablet (like the ones that fizz when it touches liquids) into vinegar.
Then we recorded what we observed in our science notebook.
We also went over the answers to THE MODEL above our observations, and the answers are: the antacid tablet represents food; breaking the tablet represents mechanical breakdown; adding vinegar represents chemical breakdown. We'll extend the model next class as we design an experiment to test how mechanical breakdown impacts the speed of chemical breakdown.
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