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Week 5: Materials Engineering

March 6, 2009 This week’s lesson focused on Materials Engineering.  As a class, we brainstormed different properties of materials. Jenna and I then focused on the properties mass, volume, and density, explaining the relationship between the three. The students had been recently learning about fractions and division, so the activity meshed well with their new capabilities. We emphasized that mass was the term in the numerator and volume was the term in the denominator. For the activity, each group was given three objects to measure the volume of. One of the objects was a sphere, so we used the water displacement method to find its volume.  The mass of each object was given. Last year I was able to obtain a balance scale for the students to use. I think that the students really enjoyed using the scale, so it was too bad that this classroom didn’t have one for us to borrow. Overall, this activity requires more effort to keep the students’ focus, however, I think the students benefit greatly because they make many connections during the lesson.