Apologia Educational Ministries
Physical Science Assignment
Supplement
2008-2009 School Year
Mr. Rosenoff’s Class
A. Steps for Success
These are the steps taken by successful students last year for
completing the required Module work. Please
note: these are the steps I am suggesting you take also!
As per Potter’s School policy, any assignment submitted is assumed
to be supervised and proctored by the student's parent.
First Week:
1.
Read the assigned reading indicated in your syllabus, including labs,
before coming to class.
2.
Answer the On Your Own
questions when you come to them. (These
are not turned in. They are for your
benefit. The answers are at the end of
your Module.)
3.
Attend Class: ask questions about reading assignment and labs. Participate, listen and learn.
4.
Perform the labs included in the week’s reading. Write the required informal lab report for
each lab completed.
5.
Place them in your notebook for safe keeping. (If you are doing the optional microscope
experiments these should be completed also.)
Second Week:
1.
Read the assigned second reading, including labs, before coming to
class.
2.
Answer the On Your Own questions
when you come to them. (Again, do not
turn these in.)
3.
Attend Class: ask questions about reading assignment and labs. Participate, listen, and learn.
4.
Perform labs included in the week’s reading. Write the required informal lab reports. (If you are doing the optional microscope
experiments these should be completed also.)
5.
Answer the Study Guide
questions at the end of the module.
(This is an open book assignment.
I have provided you an example of a completed assignment below.)
6. Parents use your Solutions Manual to correct your
student’s Study Guide answers.
7. Have the student
correct any error they may have made in the Study
Guide assignment.
Third Week:
1.
Overlap week. You will need to
begin the next Module in your book during this week. Follow the steps above.
2.
Ask questions in class about your Study
Guide grade. I will give you a
review for your Module Test during class this week. If you miss class this week, you will need to
listen to the class recording for Test prep assistance.
3.
Take the online Module Test by
the date indicated in your syllabus.
This assignment is closed book
and closed notes. The Module Test will be forwarded to me
automatically once you click on “Finished”
on the Apologia site.
4.
Parents
MUST sign the bottom of the test and be present during the testing session.
Fourth Week:
1.
Ask questions in class about your Module
Test grade and your finished experiment reports.
2.
Continue on with next Module work.
B. Assignment Guidelines
1. Formal Experiment
Reports MUST BE
2. Formal Experiment
Report assignment requirements are outlined in detail in your 2008-2009 Assignment Supplement. Remember, I expect physical science students to have had one
year prior practice writing experiment reports.
I do allow revisions of the experiment report during first semester and
will tell your student how to improve their assignment before
resubmission. During second semester, I
will grade the formal experiment report as received. If you plan to use graphs or other graphics as part of
your report Observations section, YOU MUST E-
3. Module Tests are taken
online through the Apologia site: www.apologiascience.com.
Module Test assignments
4. All Test assignments,
except your semester exams, must be completed within 60 minutes of logging onto
the Apologia site. Semester exams must
be completed within 90 minutes. After 60
or 90 minutes, depending on the assignment, Apologia WILL DISCONNECT YOU
5. Upon submission of any
assignment through Apologia, the Apologia site will forward a copy to my e-mail
address and forward a receipt copy to your e-mail address of record on the
site. IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO
OBTAIN A RECEIPT FROM THE APOLOGIA COMPUTER
6. Students must be
disciplined enough to submit required work on time. As per Potter's School policy, I
will deduct 10% per day from the score received on the assignment on all late
work, including the Parent
Notebook Report,
unless the lateness results from personal illness, family emergency, or
computer problem of a non-reoccurring nature.
In these instances, I will grant full points. A schedule for the course, providing due
dates for all assignments for the entire year, has been posted online. If you are leaving on vacation or some other personal choice
holiday, please adjust your study schedule to submit the assigned work before
leaving. I will always accept an
assignment early. I am available during
my office hours to help you complete assignments before the due date, when and
if necessary, during the school year.
7. All class assignments
are due by 6:00 PM, Eastern Time, on the date indicated
in the Schedule I have posted online.
The Apologia Science time stamp on your work is the
final authority on whether something is submitted on time or not. NOTE:
8. Students should keep
hard copies of all their work (labs, study guides, tests, etc.), not just
computer saved work. Doing so will allow
the student to keep a good portfolio of their class assignments should they be
asked to demonstrate their work at some later date. Please note, I do not
maintain copies of a student's work beyond the end of the school year. I
will maintain a copy of a student's final semester grades for seven years
beyond the end of our class together.
C. Study Guide Assignment
The following is an example of the completed Study Guide
assignment. (You do not have to word
process this assignment. I highly
suggest your student write the answers in complete sentences as complete
sentence structure will be required on the Test or Exam.)
As per Potter’s School policy, any assignment submitted is assumed
to be supervised and proctored by the student's parent.
Mr. Biology Bugs
Biology
Module 1 Study Guide
Answers to #1
a. Metabolism is the process by which a living organism takes
energy from its surroundings and uses it to sustain itself, develop, and grow.
b. Photosynthesis is the process by which a plant uses the energy of sunlight
and certain chemicals to produce its own food. Oxygen is often a
by-product of photosynthesis.
c. Herbivores are organisms that eat plants exclusively.
d. Carnivores are organisms that eat only organisms other than plants.
e. Omnivores are organisms that eat both plants and other organisms.
f. Producers are organisms that produce their own food.
g. Consumers are organisms that eat living producers and/or other consumers for
food.
h. Decomposers are organisms that breaks down the dead remains of other
organisms.
i. Autotrophs are organisms that are able to make their own food.
j. Heterotrophs are organisms that depend on other organisms for food.
k. Receptors are special structures or chemicals that allow living organisms to
sense the conditions of their surroundings.
l. Asexual reproduction is reproduction accomplished by a single organism.
m. Sexual reproduction is reproduction that requires two organisms, a male and
a female.
n. Inheritance is the process by which physical and biological characteristics
are transmitted from the parent (or parents) to the offspring.
o. A mutation is an abrupt and marked difference between offspring and parent.
p. A hypothesis is an educated guess that attempts to explain an observation or
answer a question.
q. A theory is hypothesis that has been tested with a significant amount of
data.
r. A scientific Law is a theory that has been tested by and is consistent with
generations of data.
s. Microorganism is a living creature that is too small to see with the naked
eye.
t. Abiogenesis is the theory that, long ago, very simple life forms
spontaneously appeared through random chemical reactions.
u. A prokaryotic cell is a cell that has no distinct, membrane-bound
organelles.
v. A eukaryotic cell is a cell with distinct, membrane-bound organelles.
w. Species are a unit of one or more populations of individuals that can reproduce
under normal conditions, produce fertile offspring, and are reproductively
isolated from other such units.
x. Binomial nomenclature is naming an organism with its genus and species name.
y. Taxonomy is the science of classifying organisms.
2. The four criteria for life: (1) All life forms contain
deoxyribonucleic acid, which is called
3. The carnivore is a heterotroph and a consumer. Carnivores do not eat
plants.
4. If a living organism's tentacles were cut off in an accident,
it would not be able to survive long because it no longer has the ability to
sense and respond to changes in its surrounding environment. Its
receptors (tentacles) were destroyed and therefore no longer able to sense the
conditions of the environment.
5. The parent and off springs will
reproduce sexually.
6. The statement is wrong because science cannot prove anything.
The best science can say is that all known data support a given statement.
7. The scientific method represents the best conclusions that
science has to offer, but they are nevertheless not completely reliable. The
scientific method cannot be proven and is limited. The scientific method starts
out with a person making observations. Observation allows the scientist to
collect data. Once enough data has been collected, the scientist forms a
hypothesis to explain those observations or to answer a question. The person
(often with the help of others) then designs experiments to test the
hypothesis. After the hypothesis has been tested by a significant amount of data
and is consistent with all of it, then it becomes theory. After more testing
with generations of data, the theory could become a scientific law.
8. The story of spontaneous generation illustrates the
limitations of science because it proves that scientific laws are not 100%
reliable. Because it is impossible to fully test a scientific law, and because
laws are tested by experiments that might be flawed, scientific laws are not
necessarily true. All 1900 years of executing the scientific method resulted in
a law that was clearly wrong. Thus, putting too much faith in scientific laws
and theories will end up getting you in trouble, because many of the laws and
theories in science today will eventually be shown to be wrong.
9. A wise person should place his/her faith in the Bible because it is %100
reliable and infallible.
10. The theory of abiogenesis is another example of the idea of spontaneous
generation. Abiogenesis is a theory that states that life sprang from
non-living chemicals eons. If you look at the track record of spontaneous
generation throughout the course of human history, it is safe to conclude that
at some point, the version of spontaneous generation known as abiogenesis will
also be shown to be quite wrong. We now know that this law is wrong.
11. The classification groups in order are: Kingdom, Phylum,
Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.
12. This organism belongs to the kingdom Animalia.
13. This organism belongs to kingdom Monera.
14. 1. macroscopic, proceed to key 3
3. heterotrophic, proceed to key 5
5. decomposer, kingdom Fungi
D. Informal Laboratory
Report format
The
experiments in this course are designed to be done as you are reading the text.
I recommend that you keep a notebook of these experiments. This notebook serves
two purposes. First, as you write about the experiment in the notebook, you
will be forced to think through all of the concepts that were explored in the
experiment. This will help you cement them into your mind. Second, certain
colleges might actually ask for some evidence that you did, indeed, have a
laboratory component to your physical science course. The notebook will not
only provide such evidence but will also show the college administrator the
quality of your physical science instruction. I recommend that you perform the
experiments in the following way:
·
When
you get to an experiment, read through it in its entirety. This will allow you
to gain a quick understanding of what you are to do.
·
Once
you have read the experiment, start a new page in your laboratory notebook. The
first page should be used to write down all of the data taken during the
experiment. What do I mean by “data”? Any observations or measurements you make
during the experiment are considered data. Thus, if you see an organism during
an experiment, you need to either describe it or draw it. If you measure the
length of something during the experiment, that is part of the experiment's
data and should be written down. In addition, any data analysis that you are
asked to do as a part of the experiment should be done on this page.
·
When
you have finished the experiment and any necessary analysis, write a brief
report in your notebook, right after the page where the data and calculations
were written. The report should be a brief discussion of what was done and what
was learned. You should not write a step-by-step procedure. Instead, write a
brief summary that will allow someone who has never read the text to understand
what you did and what you learned.
|
PLEASE
OBSERVE COMMON SENSE SAFETY PRECAUTIONS! The experiments in this course are no more dangerous than most
normal, household activity. Remember, however, that the vast majority of accidents
do happen in the home. Chemicals used in the experiments should never be
ingested; hot beakers and flames should be regarded with care; and all
experiments should be performed while wearing eye protection such as safety
glasses or goggles. |
E. Formal Laboratory
Report Format
Standard six-step, typewritten formal laboratory write-up should
include the following: (You do not have
to follow this format for your penciled, handwritten, laboratory notebook. There is information on how to prepare an informal
lab notebook report included above.) You
are required to produce one formal report per quarter. I will allow your student to revise the first
two while they learn, but the last two will be graded as received.
Name Date
Title of the Experiment
A. Purpose
You must tell what the experiment is about and what area it will
test. Background on the area is
expected. (In other words, provide
details about what is being experimented on.)
You must use your textbook and two outside resources preparing your
report background. You must also include a statement of what the
experiment hope to show and why this topic is of interest. You must also include a hypothesis statement
in the standard “If, then” format for scientific research work. First person pronouns are not used in
scientific writing.
B. Equipment
Provide a complete list of equipment necessary to conduct the experiment. Equipment should be listed in a 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, etc., fashion down the page.
C. Procedure
Provide a complete list of the procedure used. Procedure should be
written in a cookbook fashion and be numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., fashion down
the page.
D. Observations
Provide a detailed, objective report of observations -- what was seen, heard,
felt, tasted, smelled -- when the experiment was performed. Charts and
graphs which provide detail are encouraged, but these do not take the place of the
narrative observations.
E. Conclusions
Provide analysis of the experiment: try to explain what was seen, heard, felt,
tasted, or smelled while the experiment was happening. Be sure to provide ways that the experiment
could be improved if the experiment was done again and any ideas for further
research the experiment might have generated.
Note: there are ALWAYS ways to improve how an experiment is done and
ideas further research generated.
F. Bibliography
If you seek help from someone or quote facts from a book,
internet source, or other media you should include them in bibliography in
using the format I provide. You are
required to research two outside resources other than your textbook and use
them in the background of your report.
Additionally, you must cite your textbook and me as a “class source” or
“personal interview” on every lab report.
The completed Word document of the formal experiment report
should be printed and saved to your student’s notebook. The completed and spell-checked Experiment
Report is then copy/pasted into the assignment template on the Apologia
submission site. An example of a
completed Physical Science experiment follows.
Please
note -- I expect you as incoming physical science students to be able to
produce a quality lab report similar to the one below:
Rachel D.
Experiment 15.5
How the Eye Detects
Color
A. Purpose:
The purpose of this experiment is to demonstrate how the eye
perceives color.
In this experiment, a solid red cross on plain white paper will
be viewed for about one minute. After
quickly pulling off this sheet of paper, a different plain piece of paper which
will be placed directly under the original sheet of paper will be viewed to
determine if anything can be seen by the eyes even though there really isn't
anything on the paper.
In order to see light, the retina of each eye is outfitted with
cells called rods and cones. The cone
cells are sensitive to color; the rod cells are not. The cone cells transmit electrical signals to
the brain whenever they are hit by certain frequencies of light. (NASA) The brain receives the electrical
transmissions and uses them to form an image.
It turns out that some cone cells are only sensitive to low-frequency
visible light (red light) while others are sensitive to medium frequency
visible light (green light) while still others are sensitive to the higher
frequency lights (blue light).
When colored light hits these cells, they will only send signals
to the brain if the light that they are sensitive to is hitting them. Thus, if
a mixture of blue and yellow light hits the eyes, the medium and high-frequency
cone cells transmit signals to the brain, but the low-frequency cone cells do
not. This is how the brain knows to
construct an image which contains yellow and blue. (Friedhoffer)
This experiment hopes to show that the way the eye perceives
color is based on the frequency of the light that hits the eye.
This experiment is of interest because it truly demonstrates how
marvelous God designed the human eye and the brain to work together to perceive
color.
Hypothesis:
If the frequency of the light hitting the eyes determines the
color the eyes perceive, then the eyes should perceive a bluish-green cross on
a blank sheet of white paper when another sheet of white paper containing a red
cross that the eyes have stared at for at least sixty (60) seconds is quickly
withdrawn.
B. Equipment:
1. Two sheets of plain
white paper (there cannot be lines on them).
2. A bright red marker (A
crayon will also work, but a marker is better).
C. Procedures:
1. Take one of the sheets
of paper and make a thick cross on it with the red marker. The cross should be about 6 inches long, and
the two legs which make up the cross should be about ¾ of an inch thick. Color the entire cross so that there is a
large, solid bright red cross in the middle of a white sheet of paper. See
e-mail attachment labeled Procedure #1.
2. Take the clean sheet
of white paper and put it underneath the sheet with the cross on it. Make sure the cross faces the eyes so that
the cross can be seen.
3. Stare at the cross for
a full 60 seconds. Blink if needed, but
do not take the eyes off of the cross.
4. After a full 60
seconds of staring at the cross, quickly pull the top sheet of paper out of the
way so that only the clean sheet of paper on the bottom can be seen.
5. Note what happens in
lab notebook. There is about a 10%
chance that nothing will be seen by the eyes.
Most eyes, however, will see something rather dramatic.
D. Observations:
1. When looking at the
white piece of paper with the red cross that was drawn on it, the only thing
that was seen for the first few seconds was just the plain, regular red cross.
2. About 10 seconds
later, while staring hard at the red cross, a bluish-green light was seen
faintly outlining the red cross.
3. The red cross started
becoming blurry and dull towards the middle of the experiment and the
bluish-green light was still outlining the red cross.
4. Towards the last few
seconds of staring hard at the red cross, the cross started appearing a deeper
red color, almost brown.
5. When quickly removing
the paper that the red cross was drawn on, and not moving the eyes or blinking
through the whole experiment, an image of the whole cross appeared on the white
piece of paper in a glowing aqua color.
6. The color of the cross
on the blank sheet of white paper was like the color of a clean-clear treated
pool.
E. Conclusions:
While looking at the red cross, all of the low-frequency cone
cells were sending signals to the brain, but the other cone cells weren't doing
anything. Cone cells tire pretty
quickly, and when they have sent the same signal to the brain for a period of
several seconds, they eventually shut off.
The brain, sensing that no more signals are coming from the cone cells,
assumes that they have shut off simply because they are tired, and it holds the
same image in the mind until new signals come along. Thus, as the cross was being stared at, the
low-frequency cone cells eventually turned off.
Since no more signals were coming from the low-frequency cells, and
since no signals had come from the medium and high-frequency cone cells, the
brain was receiving no more signals. It
therefore assumed that the cross was still being looked at and continued to
hold that image in the mind.
When the top sheet was pulled away quickly, white light began to
hit the eyes where only red light had hit them before. Since white light contains all frequencies,
the medium and high-frequency cone cells began to receive light and transmit
signals to the brain. The low-frequency
cone cells, however, were still shut off, so they didn't send any signals, even
though they should have. The brain
started receiving new signals, but only from the high and medium-frequency cone
cells. Therefore, it constructed an image of green (medium frequency) and blue
(high frequency) light. Eventually
though, the low-frequency cone cells realized that they had to start
transmitting again, and once they did, the brain realized that the eyes were
seeing all energies of light and thus formed a white image in the mind.
In summary, the way color is perceived is determined by the
frequency of light that hits the eyes.
There are several ways this experiment could be improved. First, make sure the paper with the red cross
on it is held right in front of the eyes, not lying on table. With the paper held this way, the
concentration was focused better on the cross.
Second, include a ruler in the Supplies section in order to mark inches
for the cross. Third, have someone else
record the seconds when changes were viewed so that the experimenter doesn't
have to watch the time. It would also be
able to include a stopwatch in the Supplies section of this experiment.
Additional research was done performing the same experiment with
different parts of the cross colored in red in order to see how the eyes
perceived the color and which parts of color the eyes picked up. The experimenter viewed the cross identified
as Additional Research, #1, and only the filled-in red part of the cross
appeared a bluish-yellow color when quickly moving the paper away. When viewing the cross identified as
Additional Research, #2, only the center red-triangle on the cross appeared a
bluish-yellow color after quickly moving the paper away. It was interesting to see what the eyes
actually perceived even though there were other colored parts to this cross.
F. References:
Duke, Suzanne. Personal Interview. 7 May 2003.
Duke, Thomas. Personal Interview. 9 May 2003.
Friedhoffer, Bob. Physics Lab in a Housewares Store. Franklin
Watts Publishing. 1996
“NASA Imagers: The Electromagnetic Spectrum.” Online. 1 May
2003.
http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/ems.html
“
http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/anatomy/anatomy.html
Rosenoff, Steven.
Classroom/Internet Lecture. May
2003.
VanCleave, Janice. Janice VanCleave's Physics for Every Kid.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1995.
Wile, Dr. Jay L. Exploring Creation With Physical Science.
Apologia Educational Ministries, Inc. 2000.
An example of lab report grading criteria follows:
A. Purpose (10 points possible) (10 points earned)
You must include:
1. What the experiment is about
2. Background information on the experiment from your textbook and two
other resources
3. What the experiment hopes to show
4. Why this topic is of interest to science
5. A hypothesis statement
B. Equipment (5 points possible) (5
points earned)
1. Provide a complete list of equipment necessary to conduct the
experiment.
2. Equipment should be listed in a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., fashion down the
page.
PERFECT.
C. Procedure (5 points possible) (5 points earned)
1. Provide a complete list of the procedure used.
2. Procedure should be written in a cookbook fashion
3. Procedures must be numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., fashion down the
page.
PERFECT.
D. Observations (10 points possible) (10 points earned)
1. Provide a detailed, objective report
of observations -- what you saw, heard, felt, tasted, smelled, etc -- when the
experiment was performed. (Charts and
graphs which provide detail are encouraged. You can also provide me with
a narrative of your observations in paragraph form.)
GREAT
E. Conclusions (10 points possible) (10 points earned)
You must include:
1. An analysis of the data
2. Ways to improve the experiment
3. Ideas the experiment generated for further research
OUTSTANDING.
F. Bibliography (10 points possible) (10 points earned)
You must include:
1. Bibliographic reference for me as a class lecture or personal
interview and your textbook in proper format as given in examples.
2. References for two other sources (minimum) you referenced for
information about this lab.
WONDERFUL BIBLIOGRAPHY
ASSIGNMENT GRADE: 50/50 100% Excellent.
As per Potter’s School policy, any assignment submitted is assumed
to be supervised and proctored by the student's parent.