VIDEO: 'THE LIVES OF THE STARS'

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The following episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, 'The Lives of the Stars', forms the basis of a student homework assignment given in class on Friday, August 31.  



 

The entire episode is available for students to watch, as needed,  HERE: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrmM51Kldv0

SYLLABUS, UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO CHEMISTRY

Students, here is the first of what will be many Unit Syllabi given you in this course.  A syllabus is simply a schedule of events and other important information for a course, and you will receive one for each Unit in Chemistry.

We will review this together in class, and you will receive a three-hole-punched hard copy.  Learn to use this to manage your time!

VIDEO: COSMIC VOYAGE

Chemistry students will be viewing a 36-minute IMAX video in class beginning on Friday, August 17th, and completing a worksheet based on part of the video. The film, 'Cosmic Voyage', was made in 1996 for the Smithsonian Institute and was clearly inspired by a classic science education film called 'Powers of Ten', originally produced in 1977 by the husband-and-wife team of Rae and Charles Eames.

'Cosmic Voyage' approaches the idea of using the metric system, which is based on powers of ten, to explore the question: "What is really large, and really small?" The film first zooms out from an acrobat's ring in St. Mark's Square in Venice, the place where Galileo first trained his telescope on the heavens.


Through 23 powers of ten, we leave first the Earth, then our solar system, then the Milky Way Galaxy behind, until we reach the limit of modern astronomy, where we can see images from about 13 billion years past.


Reversing course, the video then zooms in on drop of water in the Dutch town of Delft, where Antonie Van Leuuwenhoek first trained his early microscope to discover the hidden world of microbes.



As we zoom in on a paramecium, we penetrate its cell nucleus, then zoom in on a molecule of DNA.


Within that molecule is a carbon atom, and the world within that atom is mostly empty space! Within the atom, the atomic nucleus contains virtually all of an atom's mass, made of particles called protons and neutrons. These, in turn, are formed from even smaller particles called quarks.

The film continues with a discussion of the search for a fundamental theory in physics through the use of particle accelerators like Fermilab, along with an overview of the likely "recent" events that led to our sun, our solar system, the Earth and life itself.

Here, presented on YouTube, is the first segment (Chapter 1) of the film who wish to review the material or share it with others. As the narrator (Morgan Freeman) intones, 'we are all travelers on a voyage of discovery!' Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 can be assessed at YouTube directly or by clicking on the hyperlinks 

GENERAL CHEMISTRY LAB PROCEDURE, Part One

Welcome to Chemistry, at Bullard High School!  

This post outlines the general procedure that ALL Bullard High School Chemistry students are expected to follow in setting up and creating their Lab Reports.  This is a major part of your grade!

You must keep your laboratory work in a bound, quadrille-ruled journal (graph paper pages).  On the cover, print in ink your name, Chemistry 2018-2019, and the instructor’s name:

Reserve the FIRST TWO PAGES (both sides) for a table of contents, in which you will list the number, title, and pages of each experiment as you do it.  Number all pages in ink in the lower outside corner front side only.

Inside the FRONT cover, tape (or glue) the grading rubric by which your instructor will evaluate your journal:

Inside the BACK cover, tape (or glue) the laboratory safety rules: 

On the last few pages of your journal, tape (or glue) these instructions, the diagram showing common laboratory equipment and information for determining uncertainty in your measurements and calculations: