Under the direction of Mrs. Montes, Hawthorn’s Middle School Girls recently completed two successful lab experiments in their physical science class, and had a Zoom meeting with their pen pals from Costa Rica.  

Their first lab experiment examined the relationship between mass and kinetic energy.  A hot wheels car was released at the top of a ramp, where it had gravitational potential energy. This energy changed to kinetic energy as the car went down the ramp. The car came to a stop by the force exerted by the friction flaps at the bottom of the ramp. In each set of 13 trials, the girls added a weight to the bed of the hot wheels car. The girls recorded the mass of the car in grams and the stopping distance in centimeters. Assuming velocity did not change, they observed that the stopping distance increased with mass, demonstrating that kinetic energy increases as mass increases.

The second lab experiment examined heat transfer by conduction. In this experiment, water was brought to a boil in a bowl on a hot plate in one styrofoam container, and three styrofoam cups filled with water were placed in a separate styrofoam container. Three materials were tested for the ability to transfer heat: copper, aluminum, and plastic. The girls recorded temperature data in degrees celsius in all four containers of water every 20 minutes for 200 minutes. The results showed that copper was the best conductor of heat, followed by aluminum and then plastic. The temperature readings for plastic were likely influenced by the ambient temperature in the second styrofoam container as they were higher than expected.

In other news, the Middle School Girls connected by Zoom with their pen pals at a sister school in Costa Rica. It was an exciting and much-anticipated meeting as the girls had the opportunity to talk directly with their friends abroad. Through this cultural exchange, the girls have come to appreciate their similarities despite living in different countries thousands of miles apart.