This is something that’s hard but we’re working on it.

We just finished our Cold Stuff lab and Mrs. Ratzel is making us review what we learned so we can get better.  In our lab, we collected lots of data.  The problem comes because you have to decide what’s evidence.  Evidence is the data that helps prove or disprove the hypothesis.

This is how we brainstormed how to best use the data from the Cold Stuff lab.  You can tell we had lots and lots and lots of information. In the class discussion, we realized that we didn’t really know enough from just looking at the data. 

We had to analyze it which makes sense now because it’s another one of the scientific method steps.  We created a data table from every group and we were able to see how our group compared to other groups.

we had to have a big discussion about what happened in the #5 trial because something must have gone wrong.  Maybe the group recorded the starting temperature wrong or they touched the thermometer too much.  We don’t know but don’t think it’s accurate. 

But only 2 things really made us able to infer a conclusion.

• the difference in temperature from the start to the finish
• the shape of the graph

Even though we talked about it in class, it is hard to write a good sentence.  Mrs. Ratzel put a sentence starter on the SmartBoard for us and that helped us see how to do this.

You can see where she puts the “hints” that tell us what to write.  She says that before the end of the school year we’ll be able to do this without the hints or the sentence starter.

Right now we think it’s a tie between cotton and steel wool being the best insulator and we have the evidence to prove it.