Thursday, March 18, 2010

Cigarettes, Pulleys, and Zippers





Today, we had a very SPECIAL guest come to our even more WONDERFUL seventh grade class. She came to talk about being addicted to...........cigarettes! (For anyone out there who smokes, know that cigarettes also contain chemicals found in whale vomit, make-up, and poison used by the Nazis.) She told us how smoking ruined her private life. She could not do the things she loved like singing and dancing, and how her loved ones constantly worry about her health. Smoking also has the side affects of lung cancer, heart diseases, and many other forms of deadly illnesses. She also mentioned that cigarettes had taken over her life and that when she tried to quit, she would lie to herself, to her husband....




Our class had many questions ???? about smoking, quitting smoking, cost of smoking, well, basically plain old smoking. Even after our guest left, we continued discussing smoking. Here is a wonderful picture showing us a few of the chemicals in something more than 1.3 billion people smoke around the WORLD every day.




Next we had JULIA and GIO teach us about the SIMPLE MACHINE called the PULLEY! Some things that we learned where:




  • a pulley consists of a wheel and a rope


  • the pulley changes the direction and amount of force needed


  • there are 3 types of pulleys; the fixed pulley (most common), the movable pulley and the block and tackle (a combination of both, an example is the crane)


  • for a fixed pulley the input force and the output force act in different directions, and the mechanical advantage is 1


  • the output and input force of a movable pulley act in the same direction and the mechanical advantage is 2


  • a block and tackle's mechanical advantage is 3


  • some places pulleys can be found include, flagpoles, wells, garage doors (fixed pulleys), and a crane (block and tackle)




The input force is the rope being pulled down and the output force is the object moving up.





The answer to Tuesday's RaNdoM SciEncE QuEsTIon (Who invented the zipper?) is......Whitcom Judson (clasp locker, a zipper that would be pulled apart), Gideon Sundback (improved it), and Elias Howe (the actual zipper as we know it today).


DO NOT FORGET! DO NOT FORGET! DO NOT FORGET!


Math Sheet due tomorrow! How does Ms D know you tried? The formulas are written down.



There will be a quiz next Tuesday, March 23rd. It will be about WORK, POWER, and SIMPLE MACHINES.



The unlucky person to be the next scribe is .....*drum roll please*................JULIA LEE!





"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. "
--------Friedrich Nietzsche

8 comments:

  1. I like the amount of color that you used and your creative choice of words, but could you elaborate on the formulas and how we do the homework?

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  2. I liked the colors and the format of your blog, very creative. I also liked that you added some more information on cigarettes, but can you make the homework a bit more noticeable? Besides that you did really well.

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  3. Kat - great post! I love the pictures you have included and the joke :) Be careful about using too much color - sometimes your words are hard to read. Plus, be careful with the amount of sarcasm in your writing. It is a bit much at times as well. You covered what we did in class and what we talked about with good depth. Although I would agree with the comments above about making the homework stand out a bit more. Good work :)

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  4. I think the post you did is very good and I liked the colors and the images but the homework god stand out more but it was cool

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  5. Great post! I liked the different use of colors, but you could use a color different than Pink, because it is very light. I liked the pictures! But you could've told us who the guest was.

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  6. We liked your colors, we thought it made the info stand out!!!! We aren't in your class, but we understood really well all of the class!! Great job!
    Davide and Ghazaleh

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  7. Awsome NINA!!! We loved all of your colors and how you explained evreything about smoking. And even though our perants tell us never to smoke you convinced us and put the finishing touch with all those dramatic lectures! It though was kind of hard to understand the second part with machines and pullys. And he part about whale vomit....gross....but otherwise awsome job and we loved your humor!
    Vale and Karin

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  8. Wow that was a really cool presentation, I actually learned something. But the colors sometimes are used too much and I can read the words but they are hard to read. Too much sarcasm too it's kinda weird but funny. Your picture was like really cool, I liked the 2nd one better. Your presentation was like really cool, awesome I learned something!!!!!!!!!!!!


    Jakub

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