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DIR Return to: Oberto-Magorian -- Middle School Academics
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#Post#: 99--------------------------------------------------
Hat Trick
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: January 2, 2020, 1:04 pm
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This was the afternoon, Corianne waited for. She didn't care
what, that asshole -- and she really was an asshole -- Suri
said. Converting unites and measurements was important. Albina,
the Suite Advisor, had driven the point home Sunday night at a
tutoring session when she discussed baking a cake. In social
studies, also an afternoon class, Corianne and Tikvah were both
working on elevation on topographic maps which Corianne was
aware could be measured in either feet or meters. One needed to
convert metric to English and vice versa, and Fahrenheit to
Celsius and also vice versa, and that was just the beginning.
The next lesson in the geography unit (Corianne had flipped
ahead in her coursepack.) was map scale converting inches to
feet, yards, or miles or for that matter meters and kilometers.
In short, unit conversion was everywhere.
Density was another matter. It was weight (mass) over volume,
and it was why a cup of sugar weighted an ounce less than a cup
of water. Corianne wondered if there was any way to tell what
materials were more dense than others without having to just
look it up. She guessed she really wanted to know why. She mused
on this while heading into science class.
The teacher, Ms. Busch, began what was her third class of the
day segwaying from unit conversion into density. Corianne
thought again about last night's tutoring session. The teacher
did an interesting job clarifying the difference between mass
and weight. Mass was tied to force exerted on a scale, and
weight was just what a scale read. Then she had the students try
some problems in groups and individually.
Finally, she asked if there were any questions. Corianne raised
her hand. "Is there any way to figure out what items are more or
less dense than others without putting them on a scale?" she
asked.
"What do you mean?" asked Ms. Busch.
"Well my Suite Advisor had to look up how many ounces are in a
cup of sugar, but suppose I had molasses. Is there some way I
could figure out if molasses is more or less dense than water."
"There are ways to predict that. They are a bit advanced for
this class, but basically density has to do with what elements
are in a substance. For example, lead is more dense than water,
and also how far apart the molecules in that substance are. For
example, ice cubes which are the same formula as water, can
float on water.
"Now I have a question for you Corianne. You have a chunk of
bitter baking chocolate. How do you figure out how many ounces
or grams are in a cup. "
Corianne blinked. "This is not fair!" she thought. Then she
pushed the thought aside. She was glad Suri was on Team One, but
Tikvah was here. You could measure the piece of chocolate and
then weight it. You'd have ounces per cubic inch and then figure
out how many cubic inches is in two ounces or how many cubic
inches are in a cup. cc's and grams would be easier."
"And is there another way to get to the density of chocolate
that doesn't involve converting cups into cubic inches. Say you
are cooking and don't have a ruler in the kitchen."
Corianne blinked and thought of one of her housemates measuring
brown sugar. "You could grind up the piece of chocolate and
weigh it, and then put it in the measuring cup but really press
it down so there are no air spaces between the grains of
powdered chocolate. That would be like measuring cocoa. You
could get the net weight and have the volume. It might work."
"More or less... There will still be some air spaces you won't
get rid of, but that is true for any powder." Just then the bell
rang. Corianne realized her palms were sweaty. Next came social
studies, which these days was geography. Corianne got the
concepts of scaling and converting units for altitude. Last was
Team Project. This was word problems for the kids in enrichment
math and coloring sheets or those in the weakest math. They had
a whole mural to do, which Corianne envied. For those in the
middle there was review of fractions and decimals.
Corianne and Tikvah found a spot at one of the seminar tables in
her homeroom with the English teacher and began to work word
problems that reminded her of science and geography questions.
Corianne's mother said that when all the school courses worked
together, this was coherence. "It looks like you are going to
get a really fantastic education," Corianne's mother said. Those
words made Corianne feel confident and warm. She wondered how
well she was catching on to her problems. She hadn't found unit
conversion easy, and word problems while way more interesting
than work sheets were also fairly tricky.
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