Sabbatical

My sabbatical was Science Eureka. I enjoyed the whole course and I gained much knowledge about science from the sabbatical. On biology, we learned about fermentation, DNA and many more. We also made jelly from gelatin and fruits. The pineapple jelly was unable to set as it contains a enzyme that break down the proteins in gelatin.We also learnt how acid can affect bones as bones contains calcium bicarbonate which dissolves in acid.

In physics, we learnt about the magnets,how to make a lava lamp and density. The most interesting part was when we made a parachute to drop an egg from three floors without breaking it.We also found out that cereal contains iron as it gets attracted to magnets when a magnet is put near it.

In chemistry, we learnt about many elements and compounds. We did a lot of experiments that had interesting chemical reactions. I learnt about reactive metal and the most reactive metal is potassium and the least reactive was gold. We also saw how electrolysis works and it was fascinating as copper can be formed on one of the metal rods when two metal rods connected to a battery was put inside a solution of copper sulphate.

Estimation

On 1p20, we did estimation and estimated various object's weight. Some of the objects was very difficult to estimate as two of the objects weigh almost the same. My partner and I was quite accurate in estimating the weigh of the object. Only two of the object we estimated was over by 1.0N. The objects' weight was affected by the gravity pull of the earth, if we were to measure the weight on the moon, the objects will be lighter by 1/6 of its weight on earth. So i think that weight is not a force and it is the result of gravity.

Datalogging

In this lesson, we had to find out more about photosynthesis and respiration carried out by plants. The datalogger was used to collect the information about the amount of oxygen in the bottle. I did not like this lesson as I had to draw graphs which was very difficult to understand from the datalogger. In the end, I found out that respiration was more evident when there is no light. Thus, this shows that plants respire more at night so it is not good to put plants in a bedroom at night as the plants will fight for oxygen with you.

Cells

I learnt about animal cells and plant cells. I also learnt about the differences between plant cells and animal cells. One of the difference is that a plant cell has a large vacuole that takes up most of the cell but the animal cell has small and numerous vacuole. Cells made up tissues, different tissues made up a organ, different organ made up a system and different systems made up an organism. In 1p17, we looked at animal cell(cheek cells) and plant cell(onion skin cell). I also found out that cell are colourless and we had to add a drop of iodine to see the cells clearly under the microscope.

Chromatography

I learnt about the use of chromatography. Chromatography only needs very little amount of the specimen to get a accurate result. The uses of chromatography are: separate and identify mixtures of coloured substance found in food and in dyes, separate substance in drug, urine and blood, find out if athletes have been using banned drugs to enhance performance. On 1p16, we did a paper chromatography of the ink of a black marker.I found that is is not black but a mixture of dark blue, yellow and purple. It was very interesting as I watch the ink slowly separating into different colours.

Separation techniques

I learnt about many separation techniques- filtration, crystallisation, distilation, fractional distillationa and evaporation to dryness . It also learnt about the apparatus used for the techniques.On 1p15, we had to separate a mixture of salt and sand.Darryl and I separted it by filtering the sand out by using a filter paper then we boil the filtrate until all the water to evaporated. In the experimennt, we used two kinds of separation techniques which was filtration and evaporation to dryness.

Elements

I learnt about many elemnts and the chemical symbol.We studied the periodic table and and I was taught that every vertical column is called a group and each group have similar properties. Every horizontal row is callled a period. On 1p11, I learnt about the properties of a mixture and a compound. A mixture has the properties of its contents while a compound does not have the properties of the element that make up the compound