5th Green learned about Nano Science. Nano Science means studying things that are really small that you would need a microscope to see. We got microscopes on loan from Trinity College. We used them to examine the samples that our teacher gave us. We Skyped the scientists who gave us the microscopes. They showed us the different microscopes that they use in Trinity. They showed us pictures of parts of insects like a butterfly's wing and a spider's leg. It was interesting because we didn't know a spider had hairy legs!
In the second picture above, you can see one of the samples that we got. We got a few different samples from Trinity like insects , coins and bugs! We also found our own samples to examine like the board eraser, hairs and drinking chocolate. We could see the sugar crystals in the drinking chocolate. When we examined them we saw a big difference between different people's hairs. It was very interesting looking at everyday life things from a different angle and a different point of view! This was pretty amazing and awesome!
As you can see, we also went outside to check for living things. We found some living things outside. One of them was the bug on the rock. Our class went to identify all the the plants and the trees.
In First Class we were looking at food and we had to organise and sort them into different categories. It was fun to hear the different ways that people would sort food. Later on we decided to test out how dirty hands affect our food. Then we passed an apple around a circle so that everyone in the class had a chance to hold the apple. Then we all washed our hands really careful and repeated the experiment. Both apples were put into a bag and hung up on a notice board in our classroom. After only a few days we could see that the apple that was held with the dirty hands was much more discoloured and rotten that then apple that had been held with clean hands. This showed us how important it is for us to wash our hands before touching any food.
Here are some other examples of various class groups investigating and identifying living things in our environment.