This week in 6th grade science we began to dive deeper into our driving question, “How can I smell things from a distance?”. To investigate this, students were given menthol crystals to determine whether a single material could exist in all three states. Along with this, as students conducted this experiment they were required to analyze and interpret what they noticed when the menthol was heated and cooled, to determine the characteristics of solids, liquids, and gases. Students concluded that depending on the substance when a gas becomes cooled it can turn back into a solid, which is what happened with the menthol. When testing the states of matter of water, students realized that when water vapor (a gas) gets cooled it turns back into a liquid. After completing these two labs, as a class we understood that cooling does not always mean a substance will turn into a solid, a gas could cool and become a liquid as well. Moving forward, our next learning objective is focusing on creating accurate models to describe and show air when trapped inside of a flask. Stay tuned to see those models and hear about how we are getting closer and closer to answering our driving question!

Enjoy the weekend!