Week 13

What did you learn this week?

    This week we learned about different types of water and how the different outcomes it can have on M&M shells when they are mixed. There were three groups. The control group, the sugar water group, and the hot water group. We all evenly placed our M&Ms onto a plate and then poured enough of our certain type of water into the plate to just barely cover the entire bottom of the plate. We then had to take pictures every 30 seconds to see our progress. My group was the sugar water group and we had the least amount of progress (progress being the colors from the M&Ms fading into the water). This is because the sugar takes up space making it so there isn’t room for the M&Ms to shed their coating. The group whose M&Ms shed the most was the hot water group. This is because hot water has more energy to make the coating melt off. The first picture below was our group (sugar water) at 0 seconds. The second picture was our group at 3 minutes.

Are you able to relate what you learned to what you already knew?

    

    In my head, I had known that the hot water would make the M&Ms shed/melt the fastest. I knew this because when you have a bunch of M&Ms in your hand, the color starts to fade into your palm pretty quickly because our hands are warm because our body temperature is warm making them melt. Doing this experiment explained why that happens a little more and the reason for that being that there is more energy. 

How can you apply what you've learned to your teaching in the future?

    Yes. This experiment that we did in class would be a really great way to teach my future students how hot water can cause more energy which makes things melt or move faster. Energy can be a hard thing to explain especially when it isn’t visible, so doing stuff like this can help explain why things like this happen and how.