A Bursting Surprise

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I went on my first ever school trip, called CWW. This year in CWW we got to go to Sedili Besar, Malaysia. We did many fun activities and learned many things, but one moment out of them all stood out in my trip. This moment was not exactly fun... it was shocking.

During this experience I was with my friend Zi Tong, we were in our three person cabin, a small cozy place. Zi Tong had just finished having a shower, and now it was my turn. I tried turning the faucet on, but it wouldn't work. I kept on trying and trying, till I gave up. Why won't it work?!? I was super frustrated with this thing. So I put on my clothes, went out of the bath room, and asked Zi Tong if she would help me turn on the faucet. She and I tried about a million times, till we both just gave up. Suddenly the faucet out of nowhere fell off! "Ahhhhhhhhhh!" Zi Tong and I screeched!


The water just suddenly shot out of the faucet and it wouldn’t stop! We tried shutting down everything, but it just kept on shooting out tons and tons of water. We were wasting so much water! It was just unbelievable. We were also in such a small town that had a limited amount of water, which is even worse. So I came up with a plan and instructed Zi Tong what to do... "Zi Tong you stay here and help me cover the faucet with a towel. I will get someone from cabin three (the cabin next to us) to help me get our teacher; or any teacher! So I ran out of the room as fast as I could, and I banged on the door like there was no tomorrow. When Sonya, my friend, answered the door I told her what happened and asked her if she would come with me. She agreed and we ran towards our teacher's cabin.

My teacher was absolutely shocked when she heard this, she was practically standing there with her mouth wide open. After a while when she was okay, we all went back to my cabin to help Zi Tong. When we came back water was over the whole entire toilet. Mrs. Hill tried and tried to put the faucet back on, but it wouldn't work. She said that she would call maintenance and they would be here in about 10 minutes.

Time was ticking and the maintenance wasn't here. It had been about 15 minutes, and Zi Tong, Sonya and I were getting very worried. Then we heard knocking on our door. We were so relieved, we thought that it was the maintenance. It was actually my other friend, Hee Ju, from cabin three, who wanted to know what was happening, because she heard screaming, and she saw our teacher come. We told her the story, and she joined in trying to help us fix the faucet, and worrying about where the maintenance was.

Finally, after like 30 minutes, the maintenance came. He was a nice man, who was very clever. He had his big tool box, with everything that he needed. He started to work, after thinking how to fix it. I wasn’t really sure how he fixed it, but it was pretty clever. We thanked the man when he was done and told him how much we appreciated it. Hee Ju and Sonya left, after like 2 minutes, and Zi Tong and I were left alone. Then the door opens and Meena, a girl that is in our cabin, comes in. She asks me why I haven't gone for a shower yet. I stare at here blankly, not having enough energy left.

Overall this momment is now funny when you think about it, but it wasn't at the time. I guess it was a lesson learnt for Zi Tong, Hee Ju, Sonya, and I. Hopefully this won't happen again. I f it does happen again then we will know what to do.

Gum, Science, and a Triple Beam Balance!

In science we did a very fun activity called: Gum Lab! It was really fun, because in class we got to do an experiment where the main part of it included us chew gum during class. We also got to use different tools, and use a sugar cube! It was a once in a life time experience...

The main question that we were trying to solve was: how much of a gum's mass is sugar? Mass is the measurement of the amount of matter (stuff) in an object. Before we started our experiment we had to do a couple things. The first thing that we had to do was make a hypothesis. My hypothesis was: I think that the amount of a gum's mass that is sugar is 25%. This hypothesis could be wrong, I was just making a reasonable guess. After making our hypothesis we had to get our materials ready. The materials that we used were a triple beam balance, a piece of gum, a calculator, a stopwatch, and a metronome. After getting all of our materials, we started...

The first thing that we had to do was calibrate our triple beam balance. This was quite easy. It is also very important, and must be done accurately. Then, we had to find the mass of the gum and the wrapper, and then record it in our books. To weigh the piece of gum and the wrapper we used a triple beam balance. A triple beam balance is a balance with three beams. We recorded the weight of the piece of gum and the wrapper using grams.

After weighing the gum and its wrapper the fun part came! We finally got to eat our gum. But we had to chew our gum at the same rate as the metronome. We could only do this for 5 minutes. To make sure that you knew when 5 minutes was up, we had to use our stop watch. When the amazing 5 minutes were up the gum shouldn't be sweet. So after 5 minutes we had to squeeze all the liquid and sweetness out. While chewing the gum, we also had to record a couple quantitative and qualitative observations. The Qualitative observation was: the piece of gum was very soft at first. The quantitative observation was: in about 3 minutes and 11 seconds the gum lost its sweetness.

After squeezing out all the liquid from the gum, we had to measure the mass of the CHEWED gum and the wrapper. We did this and got a very interesting answer...

After we finished all the measuring, we found out how much of the gum's mass is sugar. About 2/3 of the gum is sugar. In other words about 68% of the gum's mass is sugar. That wasn't the only thing we found out, we found out that the piece of gum had about 3.3 grams of sugar. We then figured out how much of a sugar cube that would be.

  

Overall this experiment was absolutely awesome! I really enjoyed it. This may have been the first time we did an experiment in school on gum, but I hope it's not the last. I will always remember this cool and fun experiment.

Sportsmanship

Here is my project on sportsmanship... I hope you enjoy it!
(Please click on the link.)
http://solinanya.edu.glogster.com/amazing-sportsmanship/

Science Experiments!

In science I learned many new and interesting things. Like what a Dribble Cup/ Overflow Container is, what water displacement means, and how to find the volume of an irregular object.

I first learned what water displacement meant- finding the amount of volume of an object by moving water out of the way.- Then we actually did an expirement involving water displacment. We tried two experiments, in the first one we put a small sinker and a large sinker one by one into the 100ml graduated cylinder. Jeremy, my partener and my guess was right: The small sinker and the large sinker would push the water level higher. This method was very interesting and I like using the small and large sinkers.

The water displacement method two, involved a dribble cup and a beaker. To do this experiment accurately you have to have lots of patience. You have to pour water into the Dribble Cup till the very top, and the water has to go into the beaker. Once the water is in the beaker you have to do other measurments to figure out the volume of water displaced by a small and large sinker. The results from method one and two came out to be similar but not spot on. We were really close, just a little bit off. Both methods were good but the first method was easier for our group.

In the end not only did we get to use two experiments, we also found out the equation showing the realationship between 1ml of water and 1 cubic centimeter: 1ml= 1cm cubed. We found this out by using methods one and two. We learned that when you put the small and large sinker, in the graduated cylinder the water level rises. The reason it rises is because mass of the sinkers push the water level higher. 

This experiment was very fun, and I enjoyed it a lot. This experiment also taught me a lot about volume in an irregular object. Usually I don't really like science, but this experiment really showed me that science can be very fun. 

Welcome to My Blog!

Hi, welcome to my blog! I go to the amazing school: SAS (Singapore American School). I've lived here, in Singapore for about four years, and I love it. I like music, art, swimming, lemon sorbet ice-cream, dogs, hamsters, and many other things. One thing I don't like is chocolate. I just makes me sick! I have a twin sister and we are both in sixth grade. Before I came to Singapore I lived in New York, New Jersey, Taipei, and Hong Kong. I can't wait to start blogging and I hope you like my blog!