8th grade Unit 2

So far 8th grade at WAAS has been great. We have done many fun things in science, my favorite part of science class are the labs. I really like the acid,bases,and buffers lab because it was interesting to see how much an acid or base can affect water. It was cool to literally see the changes. Unit 2 was hard and confusing at first but at the end when I studied, I understood all of the big words and I understood how they all correlated to each other. It was really intimidating at first because there were so many words that I couldn't understand and didn't know the meaning. I want to be able to remember all of this so that I will have a base knowledge of biology in high school. I also have a goal to pass the EOC at the end of the year so that I can get credit for this class. 

We also did a fun lab where we were testing to see of certain foods have Vitamin C,fat,Protein,Salt,Starch,and Sugar.I think that the most interesting part of this lab was when Mrs.G blended up a "meal" from McDonalds. This was disgusting to see, but it was also interesting to see that the meal didn't have any protein. I thought that was the most interesting part of the lab considering the fact the there is a piece of meat in the burger. 

We also did another lab that tested the effects of acids and bases on water and buffers. This was a fun lab because we got to add acids and bases to water and see how the pH changed. We also got to see the effects of acids and bases on buffers. Buffers are interesting because it doesn't let acids and bases have a big effect on them. I feel like this lab was a good way to demonstrate and understand acids and bases. We used an electronic pH tester to determine the pH of the liquid. Another interesting part of this lab was that we tested the effects of buffer and acids on liver  and potato homogenate. That is basically liver and water blended together. 

On September 12-14 the whole middle school went to Kanuga. Kanuga is an outdoor school for kids to experience learning outside. This was pretty fun and all of the activities were interesting and hands on. My favorite activity was rock climbing and learning about how mint mentos create a flash in your mouth when you bite on it hard. To be honest, the food was ok but I feel like it could have been better. There was one other school there but they didn't really seem to bother us. My most favorite part of the trip was rock climbing. It was a good exercise and it felt satisfying to get to the top. We climbed on a natural rock with harnesses.