Week 12 - Day 56

yes...another day of yeast. the lab was a full class period today. the students were to study the affects of temperature and yeast. during the aikido seminar i had gone to last weekend...the guest instructor (a principal of a middle school) had announced to save all the water bottles for me and my experiment. so, thankfully i managed to get over 120 plastic bottles all of the same size...yeah for me and my fellow martial artists!

the students were given 3 bottles, 3 balloons, sugar, and yeast. i had pans set up around the lab tables containing ice water, room temperature water, and hot water. they filled the bottles up a quarter of the way and added sugar and yeast...then covered the top of a bottle with a balloon. the next step was placing a bottle in each temperature of water. they had to make a 5, 15, and 30 minute observations. during their observations, they worked on their lab report and discussed the questions. the best and worst part of the experiment was when the balloons inflated and popped up. the students were very excited and lots of "oohhh....that's so cool" and then everyone swarmed around the balloons that were starting to stand up right before their eyes. the next time i'd do this lab...i'd have more pans of water. the problem with this classroom was that there is only 3 lab tables to work on...4 if you count the one that moves and is half the size of the others. the other problem is that there weren't any pans...i had to borrow the ones i used from the kitchen.