This past summer was a summer of change. From our school hiring a wonderful new principal to my own job, the school has gone through a lot of restructuring and reorganizing. And somewhere in that restructuring, the textbooks that were ordered were misplaced. The textbooks exist, and are in the hands of someone in the supply chain and are on their way to the school at this very moment.

The problem is, they will not arrive for at least the first week of school. Key words here: at least.

So while your scholar brings home tomes of knowledge from all of their other classes, they will not be bringing one home from science … yet.

In the mean time, every student will be offered the opportunity to sign up for an access-it-from-any-computer-with-internet-access eBook. These books contain word-for-word and image-for-image the same material as the paper-and-ink textbooks that are en route. However, the eBooks contain some additional goodies: chapter study guide worksheets, section reading guide worksheets, hints on every problem in the book, videos relating to the topics, and links to related activity websites. An additional benefit is offered to your poor student’s back as these are available online and therefore don’t need to be carted around.

If your student falls in love with the eBook (my students from last year sure did), then they may waive the receipt of a paper-and-ink book. This means that there is no paper-and-ink book for them to lose. No potential $100 fine for them, or you, to have to pay. It is for this reason that I encourage you to give the eBook a real shot, as I feel that the benefits of an eBook far outweigh the discomfort of having to adjust to a new form of textbook.

This is, of course, not to say that paper-and-ink books won’t be available. Once they arrive.

If you don’t want to keep checking this site over and over to see when a new update has been posted, you can always subscribe to the rss feed through your favorite newsreader. If my last sentence made no sense to you, check out this link. It may make reading your favorite websites easier than you think.

Please feel free to email me anytime as I will be in my office soon. Take care and I look forward to an excellent school year.

Chemistry Parents: Please have your student register for the Chemistry online textbook. Instructions are under “Chemistry Documents” > “01 - Introduction” and it is titled “Online Textbook Registration Instructions”. They will need this in order to complete their chemistry work.

Remember to enroll in the proper section (2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 7th period) and use the proper naming convention of first initial and full last name. For example, John Smithson would be jsmithson.

1. Take notes on Chapter 23, Section 3 (p. 654 – 659). Notes must include the following items: (a) all “key” sentences; (b) a listing of the outer/Jovian planets in order; (c) the moons associated with each planet; (d) at least three identifying characteristics per planet
2. Personify the remaining planets of the solar system.
3. Answer all questions from Section 23.3 Assessment.
4. Weight = mass x gravity; Find out how much you would weigh on places other than Earth, by gluing the weight chart in to your ISN and completing it. “Scratch work” may be done on the input page next to it.

DivShare File - Weight_Chart.pdf

Science with Sandy - Accessible Science News

Be part of a science news website which will launch September 1, 2007. Each weekday five science news articles will be presented including a video clip.

Student writers are needed to summarize science related press releases for presentation on the web. Student editors are needed to provide positive feedback for the writers and finalize the summaries for release. Estimated time commitment for students is 1-2 hours each week.

Applications available at http://wwww.sciencewithsandy.com click on “How to Help”. Due on or before July 25, 2007.

Benefits to selected student writers and editors:
· Join an elite group of students nationwide
· Your work will be seen worldwide
· Byline on each article with your name
· Your bio and picture on the web
· Your own @sciencewithsandy e-mail address
· Keep up to date with science advances
· Gain experience for scholarship applications
· Letters of recommendation available
· Looks great on a resume

http://www.sciencewithsandy.com
E-mail: sandy@sciencewithsandy.com

Send completed applications to applications@sciencewithsandy.com by July 25, 2007

Part A and B
Part C and D
Part E

Teachers may email me from their school email account and will be provided with answer keys and additional teaching notes, if they desire. My email address is j levenbook at wcpss dot net.

Europa mission development is cancelled.

The Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) development is cancelled.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is
cancelled.

The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) is delayed.

The Juno mission is stretched out and delayed.

NASA’s Mars program was cut 40% in the past year, despite the enormous
success of the Mars Exploration Rovers
Click here to view a pdf fact sheet of all the projects cut or delayed.

Please be aware of what you are writing when you write the answers to your questions in your lab. As there is low point value to the entire assignment, each question counts significantly into the grade. You cannot afford to just rely on previous knowledge and intuition. These labs are designed to be critical thinking exercises that require you to do some reading (of your book) and prediction based on the knowledge that you were to gain from your book.

I remind you that your written answers are the only things I have to assess your level of knowledge. In more common terms, “If you write like an idiot, I’m going to have to assume that you haven’t learned anything.” Please avoid personifying the air (it does not want, eat, sweat, try, gather, etc.). Furthermore, please avoid things that your intuition should tell you aren’t true:

A basement does not gather air over the winter. A basement does not store up water over the winter, either.
There is no sun located in a basement.
The water cycle does not take a year to complete.
Heat does not make moisture. Increased heat does not necessarily lead to to increased moisture/humidity/etc.
A high relative humidity in the winter does not mean that it has just snowed.
Summer is not always more humid. If summer means humid air, and humid air means dampness, then everything should be damp, not just a basement.
If cold air sinks, then why isn’t there a level of damp along the ground?

Some hints to do better in the future in all of your classes:

1. Finish all of your sentences and words. If you trail off in the middle of a word then no one knows what you were goin
(I did that on purpose.)

2. If an activity has a title that has a concept in it (ie “Measuring Humidity”) or comes from a textbook (ie “Chapter 22.1 Assessment”), then chances are the answers to the questions are related to the concepts referenced in the activity title. Ignoring that blatant hint essentially guarantees that you are going to get the question wrong.

3. If you don’t know what a word or phrase means (ie saturated, relative humidity, damp), then don’t use it. Better yet, utilize your textbook’s glossary or a dictionary to find out what that term means.

4. If you don’t understand what a question is asking, ask your teacher.

5. If you understand what a question is asking, but don’t know the answer, avoid at all costs a core dump of everything you ever knew about the subject from day one. This makes it very hard to locate any possible partial credit and most teachers (remember, these are hints for the future as you are about to exit my class) will just give up and not be bothered. Instead, try asking your teacher. If it is too late for that or your teacher is not around, then try reading your textbook. Rare is the teacher who asks a question when the material to answer that question is not readily available to the student.

6. Whenever you are asked to explain a “principle” of something, that does not equate to usage instructions. The question is asking for the reason behind why that object works. For example:

Question: Explain the principle behind a pencil.

Usage Instructions: Apply to paper and move in a horizontal or vertical fashion parallel to the paper.

Principle: As the graphite pencil “lead” travels over the paper, the paper scrapes away thin layers of this lead and leaves it attached to the paper. This is a record of where the pencil has been located, and leads to marks known as writing or drawing.

See the difference? One tells you how to use it (wrong for the question) and the other tells you why it works (right for the question).

7. You know those naked pronouns I’ve been getting on you about all semester? They really do matter. A sentence full of naked pronouns and no defined subject is automatically wrong.

8. Please make sure that you don’t contradict yourself within the same sentence. Answers such as, “Cookiedough is clearly a color and not a flavor because it tastes good, so it must be a flavor and not a color,” serve only to make you look like an indecisive student who doesn’t want to admit that they don’t know what they are writing about.

9. It is never the right answer to respond to a question with, “I cannot answer this question because I can’t tell whether it is [insert esoteric (look this word up, kids, it will help you on the SAT) variable that doesn't matter anyway, here] or [insert another esoteric variable that has little, if anything, to do with the first one].” This is especially the case if the question is a “true or false,” or “yes or no,” question.

10. Learn how to cite your sources properly. When I taught at UNC, we’d often take delight in kicking students out/sending students to honor court (threat of being kicked out) for plagarism. If you use someone else’s words (that includes a textbook) and do not give them credit, you have committed an academic sin. General rule of thumb: if there are two words in a row that came from somewhere else, you are safe. But the instant you add that third word in a row to the other two, you’ve got to cite your source.

11. Just because it exists on the internet, does not make it fact. Wikipedia can be edited by ANYONE (yes, including you) so it contains as many untruths as truths. Various news agencies have done stories about all the untruths of wikipedia. This is why your teachers won’t accept it.

12. Please learn what the word “other” means.

13. Some teachers might not say it, but you should always compare and contrast, even if all that the assignment says is “compare” or “contrast”.

14. Unless otherwise noted, you should always write in complete sentences. No teacher complains about a grammatically correct, complete sentence. But it will save you points in the future when you didn’t realize that it had to be in a complete sentence.

15. Always do your assigned reading. Even if you skim. Don’t blow it off. That’s just dumb. Someone went through all the effort to figure out which pages aligned to what they wanted to talk about for a reason. And yes, it is effort.

16. Data tables should look like tables, not like lists.

17. Learn to love thy planner. If you use it correctly, you will always know what is coming in the future, school-wise.

18. A picture may be worth 1000 words, but you should at least caption it so the art-illiterate teacher has some idea what you’ve just drawn.

19. Always double check your teacher’s math.

20. At least once in your life, you will be convinced that a teacher hates you, specifically. If you talk to that teacher (I recommend after you are out of their class) in a mature fashion, you might find that this is not the case. Usually, it is a perception problem on your end. For example:

Anne had a teacher who seemed like he hated all women. She struggled and struggled in his class, but he seemed to always call on her when she didn’t know the answer. He even pulled her aside once, and suggested that she switch her area of concentration in college. She heard, “Some people can do chemistry and others are women.” What he’d actually said was, “Some people can do chemistry, and others might be better suited elsewhere.”

Later on, after she’d been accepted to Med School, she went back and asked him why he hated women so much. It turns out that when he’d asked a question that she did not know the answer to, she’d make eye contact with him. So he’d call on her due to the eye contact. He wasn’t trying to be mean.

Think about it.

21. Don’t let grades define you. You are each amazing people in your own way, even if a piece of paper from a school doesn’t put the “A”s on it that you think should show that. School measures only one aspect of a person, and that aspect has everything to do with getting a good paying job, but little to do with your value as a human being.

Shoot for the moon. If you miss, at least you will be among the stars.

The big picture: You are in school to get a good paying job. What does any class have to do with you? It will prevent or aid you in getting a good paying job, even if the subject itself does not. If you keep the big picture in mind, it helps you through the tough times.

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