Friday, April 30, 2010

Oil Spill Lesson

Today, Alex and I are learning about the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. I have found a "new" blog that I follow,  Free Technology for Teachers. I have already used resources from this site several times since I found it about a week ago. Anyway, from this site I found a link to CNN Student News with a report about the oil spill. (By the way, I think we'll start watching the new report each morning. They have about a 10 minute news report and I think it'll be a great way to keep up with current events.)


 Next, we did an experiment I found at How Stuff Works.  Alex helped me write up the rest of this post:

Procedure: We took two ice cubes and put one in each ziplock bag. Then, we took two cottonballs and soaked them in oil. We put 1 oil soaked cottonball on a plate and another oil soaked cottonball on the ice cube (in the baggie).  We took 2 dry cottonballs and did the same thing.


Results: Twenty minutes later, the results were that the oil soaked cottonball on the ice cube was much colder than the cottonball that wasn't in oil.

What we learned: We learned that animals with oil on them get colder than animals without oil on them.

Some of the reasons animals die from an oil spill include:

  • poisoned by the oil

  • birds can starve to death because they can't fly to catch their food

  • their food dies

  • some freeze to death
Some ways to clean up an oil spill include:
  • use special machines to vacuum up the oil
  • use rubber barriers around the spill which isolates the oil
  • absorb the oil using sponge-like pads which act somewhat like a cottonball

2 comments:

Subadra said...

Hi There,
These lessons are way too cool!The previous pics of the insects and baby opossum are awesome. How cute! You dd looks so delightful in that pic..
Subadra
http://bookslinksandmore.blogspot.com/

Robin said...

I love this lesson! I'm going to do it with Cade next week. Thanks!
The oil spill is just devastating, but I don't think many people are really thinking about it and it's long range repercussions. I'd love Cade to be better informed.
It's funny that you should mention the technology site. I stumbled into it this week, too. And Cade and I have been playing a game that we found on there. I'll post about it this afternoon, if I get a chance. It's a great resource!

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