Hello everyone, and welcome back! A new school year has started, and Ann Arbor Open's 7th and 8th grade science classes have been busy learning, discussing, measuring, calculating, hypothesizing, predicting, analyzing and having fun! We began the year by studying experimental design, where the students tried to determine whether there was a benefit to using a particular method when memorizing a random list of 20 words. The students were very creative in coming up with different methods: these ranged from alphabetizing the words, to putting the words to a song, to writing stories with the words, to drawing a picture for each word. We learned about identifying dependent and independent variables, significant differences and distinguishing between a hypothesis and a prediction. Most of September was dedicated to designing, executing and analyzing these experiments, with much attention given to producing a formal, written presentation of the experimental design, results and conclusions. 
An exciting coincidence is that on October 11, 2010, the New York Times Science section published an article about memory and activity, "Taking Early Retirement May Retire Memory, Too" where they tested the memories of retired and non-retired people between the ages of 60 and 64 by asking them to memorize and recall random word lists!
On September 21st and 22nd, around the time of the Autumn Equinox, we took a break to review the reason for the seasons (i.e. the tilt of the earth's axis)! Many students played the parts of the sun and the earth with great enthusiasm!
More to come soon on our studies of mass, volume and density1
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