Weekly Blog 01/26 Mystery Crystals

Summary

This week we compared different crystals to find the mystery crystal. We had to find out the mystery crystal which was either salt, sugar, msg, or epsom. We performed a series of experiments to find out which one was the mystery. We are still not sure yet though. Everyone in the class still has different hypothesis.

Surprise

This week one thing that surprised me was that the epsom salt was not the mystery crystal. In the beginning I thought it was most likely the epsom salt because it looked most like the epsom salt the most. If was flaky kind of like the epsom salt. When we did a test where we put the two in water, we found that the epsom salt looked nothing like the unknown at all. The epsom salt didn't dissolve AT ALL and just stayed and floated in the water while the unknown dissolved a little bit slowly. The unknown was in very small pieces compared to the epsom salt.

Backward

In what ways have you gotten better at this kind of work? 

I think that I have gotten better at finishing questions on our worksheets. I can now quickly write down informative and specific answers. We often need to quickly finish the worksheets since sometimes we don't have enough time. Usually we answer questions that ask if your hypothesis was correct not correct. For example, after conducting this experiment do you have enough information for sure to tell what the unknown is.

Forward

One thing I would like to improve upon is ...

One thing that I would like to improve upon is to after I finish the experiment clean it up quickly so I have more time to finish the worksheets. Since I think that I need more time to finish my worksheets I will clean up quickly.

Inward

What was especially satisfying to you about your work this week?

This week I really liked how my table was very careful on the experiments. For example, when we measured the 10 paperclips with the powders we made sure they were very even and accurate.

Outward 

Did you do your work the way other people did theirs? How was it similar or different from others?

Most of the time everyone did their work the same way since we followed the same instructions. We probably did not make it exactly the same though. Some groups may have put in slightly different amounts of powder into the cups.