Update! Yes, we finished the M&M lab, graphed the data in a histogram and practiced several data sets! Whooooo! This seldom happens! We finished the planned lessons.
The Chemistry class meets Tuesdays and Fridays this year. Tomorrow, my husband, Rob, and I are doing another combined Chemistry and Statistics class to introduce experimental design and how to use the graphing calculator.
The Chemistry class meets Tuesdays and Fridays this year. Tomorrow, my husband, Rob, and I are doing another combined Chemistry and Statistics class to introduce experimental design and how to use the graphing calculator.
First, we're using this graphing exercise to see if the kids can enter the data into the STAT function, turn on STAT PLOT, set the range, graph the data (depth and average temperature), calculate the linear regression, and overlay the line of best fit over the scatter plot data. In other words, see if they remember our lesson from Tuesday. Maybe.
Next, Rob and I are going to do this Statistics and Probability Lab with M&Ms. He and I have 15 small cups of 50 gram samples of the candies, from a party-size bag of regular M&Ms. Most of the M&M labs use individual bags of candies for each student. The party-size bag was cheaper; so we weighed 50 g. samples before class.
We decided to have a quick discussion about experimental design, hypothesis, and controlled variables before the lab. Basically, the kids are going to predict which color M&M candy is the greatest percent in the candy sample (alternate hypothesis) or the percentages of each color are the same (null hypothesis). This article explains how two companies produce M&Ms varies slightly by company. The percentages by color are in this article--for milk chocolate candies!
We are going to give each child a cup with 50 grams of candies. They will count the number of each color candy and calculate the percentage of each color in the cup. Next each table of three kids will pool the data. Finally, we'll pool and calculate the class data. Next Tuesday, Rob is going to do two other exercises with the Statistics class, such as sampling with replacement and outliers. Once we have the class data, the kids are going to graph it in the graphing calculators and produce histograms--bar graphs by color. Yeah!
What does this have to do with Chemistry? Very little. However, it will allow a brief discussion of experimental design and introduce the kids to the graphing calculator.
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