Measurement Unit-
8th Measurement Mini Unit
The purpose if this unit is to familiarize students with the International System of Units or the Metric System. We will begin our Force and Motion Unit in September so it will be important that students are familiar and understand the Metric System. This unit will be made up of a series of labs to help students practice using the units in a variety of situations.
Mass - Students will learn how to use a 4 beam balance to practice finding the mass of a variety of different objects in grams. Students will also practice using the balance to find the difference in mass as from an unsharpened pencil to the sharpened pencil. Students will then have to think about where that mass went...I will briefly intro the law of conservation of mass but we will cover it later on in the year.
Volume - Students will learn how to read the meniscus of a graduated cylinder correctly, and will use the unit of milliliters to study volume. Students will then use graduated cylinders to find the volume of irregular objects like a crayon and rock. As a class we will discuss the differences in finding the volumes of regular objects (lxwxh) to finding the volumes of irregular objects with the graduated cylinder.
Length - Students will be introduced to the millimeter, centimeter, decimeter, meter, and kilometer. They will use a meter stick to measure various objects around the room as well as estimate the appropriate unit to use when measuring objects not found in the science lab like the Empire State Building.
Conversion Factors - Students will learn the mathematical procedure for how to convert from one unit to another, .... Example: from meters to centimeters.
Temperature - Students will learn how to convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit or vice versa. Students will practice identifying different temperatures in each unit and estimating about where it would fall in the other unit. Students will also be introduced to a Kelvin.
