🔬 LAB BOOK
Sample Labs for
Grades 4, 5, 6, & 7
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🔬 LAB BOOK
Grade 4 Sample Lab
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🔬 Lab 2: What's an Aerofoil? (3 weeks)
Introduction
There are a few new terms in this lab. You do not need to memorize them. Just try
to understand them.
Weight pulls things down and keeps them on the ground. Whether a bird or an
airplane, anything that flies has to overcome that weight pushing it down. The thing
does this mechanically by producing lift, which pulls up in the opposite direction to
the weight. The Wright Brothers tested many wing shapes to find just the right one
to produce enough lift to help their airplane fly. Then they combined this wing with
simple machines to build their airplane! The basic shape of any wing is called an
aerofoil (Figure A).
Figure A: An aerofoil overcomes weight with lift.
In this experiment, you will make an aerofoil and see if it can produce enough lift to
fly. Then you will make changes to your aerofoil and see what impact these changes
have on its ability to fly.
Take a few moments now to put what you know into words. In your lab notebook,
compose a few sentences to answer the hypothesis questions, "What do I know
about this?" and "What do I plan to find out?" When you are finished with this
introductory narration, make sure that the materials below are all ready for the
procedure. If you have extra time today, copy Figure A into your lab notebook.
Materials
● 1 sheet of cardstock
● a pencil to punch a hole through the paper
● tape
● paper or plastic drinking straw, cut in half
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● table or counter with an overhang
● sturdy sewing thread, 2 pieces each a little longer than the height of your
table or counter
● hair dryer
● optional: sewing needle
Procedure
1. Lay your sheet of cardstock on the table in front of you.
2. Fold the cardstock along the length, so that one side of the fold is longer than
the other side by somewhere between the width of your fingertip and an inch:
3. Now bring the 2 edges to meet and tape them together along the edge,
making the aerofoil shape.
4. You are going to make your aerofoil mobile in the next few steps by making it
look something like this:
5. Using a pencil, carefully punch a hole through the top layer about the width of
your thumb in from the edge. Work the pencil to the bottom and decide
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where the bottom hole should be. Then punch the hole through the bottom
layer as well.
6. Carefully remove the pencil and repeat on the opposite side of your aerofoil.
7. Push each half of your drinking straw through a pair of the punched holes. It
should be a snug fit.
8. Thread a long piece of thread through each of the straws. Use a needle if you
need to.
9. Tape the bottom end of the 2 threads securely to the floor at about the same
width as the straws on your aerofoil. If your floor is carpeted, you can place a
book on the floor and tape them to the book.
10. Pulling the threads snug, tape them to the table or countertop above at about
the same width. Your aerofoil wing should be able to slide easily along the
threads.
11. Aim the hairdryer at the folded edge and turn it on. Record what you see in
your notebook.
12. As time permits, think about how you might change your aerofoil wing. Try a
few different versions and see what happens. Record what you see in your
notebook.
Analysis and Conclusions
This is the last day of What's an Aerofoil! Try drawing a diagram of an airplane in
your lab notebook. How do weight and lift affect the wings of an airplane? Show
these on your diagram.
Now take a few moments to put what you have learned into words. In your lab
notebook, compose a few sentences to answer the questions, "What did I find out?"
and "What now?"
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🔬 LAB BOOK
Grade 5 Sample Lab
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🔬 Lab 1: Where Does Weather Come From? (Part 1) (3 weeks)
Introduction
Weather is an important consideration in our daily lives. Weather often determines
what clothes we wear and whether we spend the day indoors or out. Weather can
also present us with life-or-death situations, like in your book. Scientists work hard
to understand the weather to predict it better and help those most at risk from
these dangerous situations. But where do weather changes come from?
One major cause of weather changes is the movement of air. Air moves because of
Earth's rotation. It also moves because of uneven heating and cooling at the surface.
Why would the surface heat unevenly? One reason is that the sun's light is stronger
in some locations, like the equator, and during some seasons, like summer. Where
the sun's light is stronger, those surfaces will absorb more heat. Another reason is
that land and water do not warm and cool at the same rate. It is this second reason
that we are going to investigate in this lab.
Think of a time when you have gone swimming. Do you recall that the pavement or
sand near the water felt very warm to the touch? By contrast, the water felt cool on
your skin. The water may have felt rather cool, even on a very hot day. The water
and the land next to it were being warmed by the same amount of light energy, but
water absorbs a lot more before its temperature increases. This means that water
has a higher specific heat than land. What happens to all of that extra energy in the
land? It moved to a cooler area, and you felt it on your toes! That heat energy
warmed the air just like it warmed your skin. If you are at a pool with a smaller area,
the warm air over the land and the cool air over the water is also quite small.
However, if you are at the beach, those warm and cool air masses are very large. All
of that air moving around is wind. Wind is air movement.
You will simulate this uneven heating and cooling in an oven by warming a small
mass of land and water. Which do you think will warm faster? Which will cool
faster?Do you think you will be able to measure the difference? What is your
hypothesis?
Take a few moments now to put what you know into words. In your lab notebook,
compose a few sentences to answer the hypothesis questions, "What do I know
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about this?" and "What do I plan to find out?" When you are finished with this
introductory narration, make sure that the materials below are all ready for the
procedure. If you have extra time today, try drawing or diagramming paragraph 3
above.
Materials
● 2 identical, heat-safe containers that can contain about 1c
● 1c soil, allowed to dry for a few days
● Kitchen scale, substitutions possible
● Water
● Thermometer
● Oven
● Oven mitt
● Clock
Procedure
1. Preheat the oven to 300℉.
2. Use the graph paper in your notebook to create Table 1. You can add as many
columns as you need:
Table 1: Land and Water Data
Starting Starting Temp at Temp at Temp at Temp at Temp at
Weight Temp ____min ____min ____min ____min ____min
Soil
Water
3. Obtain the weight of the dried soil and place it into one of the heat-safe
containers. You can do this by weighing the soil and then placing it into the
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container or by taring the balance with the container and then adding the soil
to the container on the balance. Record the weight in Table 1.
4. Now add the same mass of water to the second heat-safe container. Record
the weight in Table 1.
5. Take the temperature of both the soil and the water to obtain a quantitative
measurement. Quantitative means that we are obtaining a quantity or
numeric value. Hold your hand over the surface of each sample and make a
qualitative assessment. Qualitative means that we are assessing a quality or
non-numeric attribute. Record both the quantitative measurement and the
qualitative observation in Table 1.
6. Heat both containers in a 300℉ oven for 15-30 minutes and record their
temperatures again. It does not really matter exactly what temperature they
reach, but you want to observe a clear difference between them. If they are
not significantly different, put them back in the oven and record their
temperature again after another 15 minutes. There is room on your table for
several temperature readings.
7. When you observe a clear difference, record one last temperature and
remove them to a heat-safe surface. Hold your hand over them to see if you
notice anything. Record both the quantitative measurement and the
qualitative observation in the appropriate column in Table 1.
8. Allow them to cool, periodically recording their temperatures until one of the
samples returns to room temperature. That will be the last measurement you
take for both samples, even if one is still warm. Hold your hand over the
surface and make an observation again. Record both the quantitative
temperature and the qualitative observation in the appropriate column in
Table 1. Then take a break for today!
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Analysis and Conclusions
This is the last day of Where Does Weather Come From (Part 1)! Use the graph
paper in your notebook to create Table 2:
Table 2: Land and Water Analysis
Final Heated Temp Final Heated Temp
-Starting Temp -Final Cooled Temp
Soil
Water
Look at your results. Subtract the starting temperature from the final heated
temperature for both samples, recording in Table 2. Which sample showed a greater
increase in temperature? Which sample showed a slower increase? What did you
notice when you placed your hand over the samples?
Now subtract the final cooled temperature from the heated temperature for both
samples, recording in Table 2. Which sample showed a faster decrease in
temperature? Was this the same sample that increased more quickly or the other
one? What did you notice when you placed your hand over the samples?
Draw a diagram of yourself standing on a beach to show what your results would
mean. Would the land or the water heat more quickly during the day? How would
the air above them move? Would it be the same situation at night, or would it be
different? Do you think there would be a difference in the spring and fall?
Take a few moments now to put what you have learned into words. In your lab
notebook, compose a few sentences to answer the questions, "What did I find out?"
and "What now?"
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🔬 LAB BOOK
Grade 6 Sample Lab
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🔬 Lab 4: Earthquake Shake (3 weeks)
Introduction
You may have noticed in Lab 3 that not all plate boundaries produce volcanic
activity. According to plate tectonic theory, volcanic activity occurs at convergent
boundaries. Convergent boundaries are where plates collide. Where one plate
subducts or slips underneath the other at a convergence, the subducting rock melts
into hot magma. A chain of volcanoes typically exists along this boundary. (Recall
the picture of this in your book on p.80.)
Earthquakes often occur at these convergent boundaries, too, but there is another
type of plate boundary that can cause earthquakes. At a transform or lateral
boundary, the plates move sideways rather than collide. (There is also a picture of a
transform boundary in your book on p.80.) Since there is no subduction, there is no
rock melting into magma. Instead, the rocky crust cracks and breaks.
Even though the true center of an earthquake is deep below the surface, we detect
the vibrations with our senses at the surface where we are. This location at the
surface is called the epicenter (Figure A) because "epi" is a prefix that means above.
Figure A: The epicenter of an earthquake is at the surface,
above the true source of vibrations.
In this lab, you will build a simple model on a piece of cardboard and then simulate
vibrations at the epicenter to see what happens to buildings in the model. First,
your buildings will all be very similar so that you can see how their proximity to the
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epicenter affects them. We do this so that the distance from the epicenter is the
only variable. Then you will try changing the buildings to see how other variables
might affect how well they fare in an earthquake. Do you think the size of the base
will matter? What about the height of the building? How about its weight?
Take a few moments now to put what you know into words. In your lab notebook,
compose a few sentences to answer the hypothesis questions, "What do I know
about this?" and "What do I plan to find out?" When you are finished with this
introductory narration, make sure that the materials below are ready for the
procedure. If you have time today, you could do steps 1-3 of the procedure.
Materials
● piece of cardboard, roughly 3'x3'
● meter stick or yardstick
● string of any kind, about 3½' long
● 3 markers in different colors
● pin
● books or blocks of wood to raise the cardboard off the surface
● 50-100 small blocks or sugar cubes of uniform size and weight
● optional: camera
Procedure
1. Use the meter stick or yardstick to find the center of your cardboard. Make a
solid dot there with your marker. This will be your epicenter.
2. Make a drafting compass with the string and marker:
a. Tie one end of the string to the middle of a marker.
b. Lay the marker at the end of the measuring stick so you can measure
the string against the ruler.
c. Use another marker to indicate every 4" (or 10cm) along the string.
3. Use the marker and string to create your model:
a. Place the first 4" (or 10cm) mark you made on the string at the
epicenter. Push the pin through the string into the cardboard at your
mark.
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b. Remove the cap from the marker. Holding the head of the pin in place
with one hand, pull the marker out to the full length. Then use the
marker to draw a circle around the epicenter.
c. Move the pin to the next mark on the string and repeat, drawing
concentric circles around the epicenter.
4. Stack the books or blocks to make 2 small towers about 2 feet apart. You
want to be able to rest your cardboard model on these towers without it
sagging in the middle, and you want to have enough room to reach
underneath them to the cardboard.
5. With the cardboard in place, create a simple building on the model using your
cubes. For example, you might lay 3 cubes on the bottom, stack 2 on top of
those, and 1 more as the top layer.
a. Create replicas of this simple building at different locations on your
model.
6. Using the graph paper in your notebook, create Table 1. For each trial, you will
need a row in the last 3 columns for each building on your model:
Table 1: Earthquake Damage
Trial Strength Type of Building Distance from % Damage
(low/med/high) Epicenter
7. Create an earthquake and collect your data:
a. Reaching under the model, create vibrations at the epicenter with a
finger. This "earthquake" is trial 1 on your table.
b. Indicate in the second column whether you qualitatively considered
the earthquake to be of low, medium, or high strength.
c. For each building on your model, record the type (you could use the
"simple" for the buildings in trial 1), the distance from the epicenter, and
estimate the % damage. If only the top cube fell or the cubes only
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shifted in place, then you might judge that as 25% damage. If the
cubes fell completely apart, then that might be 100% damage.
8. Reconstruct your buildings and create another earthquake at a different
strength to collect trial 2.
9. For trial 3, try changing some of your buildings (keep some of them with the
simple design for comparison). You could build some tall and narrow, some
with a very wide pyramid base, some with weights on top, etc. Since you have
more than one design now, you might want to draw a map on the left side of
your notebook page or take a picture to help you remember their locations.
Then you can create another earthquake and collect trial 3.
10. Complete as many trials as you like with as many variations as you are curious
about! Then take a break for today!
Analysis and Conclusions
This is the last day of Earthquake Shake! Using the graph paper in your notebook,
create Figure 1 for a scatter plot where the Distance from Epicenter is on the x-axis,
and the % Damage is on the y-axis. You can decide on your scale, but it might look
something like this:
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Figure 1: Earthquake Scatter Plot
When you are ready to add your data points to the plot, select a different color for
each earthquake Strength and different shapes for each Type of Building (e.g., open
circle, closed circle, triangle, star, line, etc.). Plot each data point and see what
patterns you notice.
Take a few moments to put what you have learned into words. In your lab notebook,
compose a few sentences to answer the questions, "What did I find out?" and "What
now?"
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🔬 LAB BOOK
Grade 7 Sample Lab
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🔬 Lab 5: Engineering a Catapult (3 weeks)
Introduction
In a few weeks, your book will introduce you to the world’s most famous engineer
(Archimedes), but we are going to go ahead and get started in lab so that we have plenty of
time with these things and ideas. The cars, buildings, and robots of today were all once
thought to be impossible. Engineers design ways to do things that often seem impossible.
They make what seems impossible easier. They often do this by using and combining simple
machines in new ways. Simple machines are very basic tools that make work easier. There are
6 different simple machines (Figure A).
Figure A: Six Simple Machines
In this lab, you will use a lever to construct a simple catapult and will then quantitatively
evaluate your catapult. Look at the diagram on p.153 of your book. What variables do you
think are most important to the function of the lever and, therefore, the catapult? In your lab
notebook, compose a few sentences to answer the hypothesis questions, “What do I know
about this?” and “What do I plan to find out?” When you are finished with this introductory
narration, make sure that the materials below are all ready for the procedure. If you have extra
time today, you can get started with steps 1-2 of the procedure.
Materials
● table or countertop
● marker
● tape
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● 2 wooden rulers, metric preferred
● bar of soap
● plastic spoon
● 5 rubber bands
● wooden craft sticks or tongue depressors
● 1-10 dry beans
● tape measure
● a variety of hardback books or other materials per student design to adjust the position
Procedure
1. Qualitatively testing a lever:
a. Place a marker parallel to the edge of a table or countertop and secure it with a
piece of tape.
b. Place a ruler on the marker perpendicular to it, like a seesaw. One end of the
ruler will extend past the edge of the table. The ruler will be your lever. The
marker is called the fulcrum.
c. Place a bar of soap on the end of the ruler-lever that is over the table and secure
it with a piece of tape. The soap is the load.
d. With the ruler-lever centered on the marker-fulcrum, press down on the end
opposite the soap-load.
e. Reposition the ruler-lever so the soap-load is as close as possible to the
marker-fulcrum. Press down on the end again and record what you notice in
your notebook.
f. Reposition the ruler-lever again so the soap-load is as far as possible from the
marker-fulcrum. Press down on the end again and record what you notice in
your notebook.
2. Engineering with a lever:
a. Attach a spoon to the end of a ruler using rubber bands. Position the spoon so
that the load (which will go in the bowl of the spoon) is at zero:
b. Then attach this spoon-ruler to a second ruler with a rubber band at the end
opposite the spoon.
c. Stack 8 craft sticks and secure them with a rubber band at each end.
d. Open the 2 rulers enough to place the stack of 8 between them. The stack of 8
is your fulcrum:
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e. Load a bean into your catapult, press down on the spoon (gently at first!), and let
it go. Record what happens in your notebook.
f. Did your bean launch up instead of forward? What can you do about that? Try
adding to the design so that the force propels the bean forward rather than up.
This could be as simple as using a couple of books to set the catapult at an
incline, or you could build additional structure for the catapult.
3. Quantitatively testing a lever:
a. Using the graph paper in your notebook, create Table 1:
Table 1: Catapult Test
Fulcrum Position Distance Thrown
1
2
3
1
2
3
1
2
3
b. Choose a starting location for your catapult. You should be able to return the
catapult to the same spot for each launch, so mark it with a piece of tape if you
need to.
c. Read the first fulcrum position from the ruler and record it in Table 1.
d. Launch the bean 3 times, measuring the distance each time and recording in
Table 1.
e. Slide the fulcrum to a new position, reading from the ruler and recording in Table
1.
f. Repeat step 3.d. at the new position.
g. Choose a third position for the fulcrum, reading from the ruler and recording in
Table 1.
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h. Repeat step 3.d. at the new position.
i. Collect as much data as you like. You can even test variables other than the
fulcrum position, but be sure to measure and record them by adding a column to
Table 1.
j. Then take a break for today!
Analysis and Conclusions
Using the graph paper in your notebook, create a figure to plot your data. The Fulcrum
Position is the independent variable on the x-axis. The Distance Thrown is the dependent
variable on the y-axis. If you tested other independent variables, use a different color to plot
that data. Does your data allow you to see a pattern? How does the independent variable
affect the dependent variable?
Take a few moments now to make some conclusions. In your lab notebook, compose a few
sentences to answer the questions, “What did I find out?” and “What now?” For example, if
you increased the weight of the load, could the fulcrum be moved to achieve the same
distance thrown? By how much? Does changing the force pressing down on the spoon affect
the distance thrown? Could you test this quantitatively?
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