Current Events: Astronomers discover planet made of DIAMOND!!!!!!

Recently astronomers have discovered a new planet! It is said to be made almost completely of carbon, due to the density of it scientists have deiced that it must be crystalline, meaning made of pure diamond!
The Planet is about five times as big as Earth, and obrits a pulsar star (small 12.4 miles in diameter, its a dead neutron star that emits radiation, spins 100 times per second). The planet is approximately 4000 light years away with a little more mass the Jupiter but is about 20 times as dense.
All planets eventually die. And scientist have theorized that when the ploenet does reach the end it will expand and morph into a whit dwarf. If this does happen the diamond planet will begin to steel mass of of the white dwarf which will increase speed making it start to spin even faster.
Now, why is mass of diamond considered a planet? The white dwarf failed to merge with the pulsar meaning the star lost almost all of its matter....so it moved farther away from the planet meaning that now its no longer engaged in the fusion reaction. So the dead core of the planet is then classified as a planet.
Here is what Mathew Bailes from Swinburne University of Technology has to say. “The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon — i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun.”
I think that this new discovery is very interesting and i would love to find out more about it.

The Element Sulfer

For Science Mrs.M assigned each person in the class an element that they needed to create a Prezi on that included the following on each element:

• Physical properties
• Chemical Properties of your element,
• Element Symbol, Bohr Diagram, Lewis Dot diagram
• What type of element it is
• Common Compounds (in which their element is a primary constituent),
• Occurrence and Production,
• Hazards
• Safety (For example: exposure to air, water, combination with other compounds, touching, etc...)
• USES: (Health sector use, Military use, Industrial use, and/or New Research or Emerging Technologies using their element.

The element that i had to do was Sulfer here is what i came up with: http://prezi.com/n01v8_wlmi7x/the-element-sulfer/

Building an Atom Simulation

What happens when you add a proton?
When ever you add a proton the atom stabilizes.
What does it mean when an atom is stable? What does it mean when an atom is unstable? IF the atom is stable then it means that it has enough energy to hold the nucleus together. If and atom is unstable then the energy in the atom is not strong enough to hold it together and the nuclei of the atoms are unstable. If and atom is unstable it will automatically lost neutrons and protons in the midst of trying to be stable.
How do you make an atom stable? What do you need to do?
If you want to make an atom stable then all you need to do is add the correct amount of protons.
What is the valence electron pattern as you move across the periodic table?
Valence elections are the electrons that are in the last shell (energy level) of an atom. They have a periodic pattern which is that the valence electrons will increase in the number as you go across a row. When you start a new row the number will drop back down and then begin to increase again.

What happens to the atom when there is more protons, more neutrons, or more electrons?
It becomes unstable.

What's the difference between a positive and a negative ion?
An ion is when an atom loses/gains an electron. So, when an atom loses an electron it becomes positivetly charged because o the number of protons in the atom are greater than the electrons in the atom. However, when an atom gains an electron it becomes a negative ion, because this time the number of electrons is great than the number of protons.

The Periodic Table of Elements: Metals and Non-Metals

Chemical Party Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBCmt_pJTRA&feature=player_embedded

NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ITS A NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM NOW IN 8TH GRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO NOW AFTER THIS POST I AM GOING TO BE WRITING ABOUT WHAT WE ARE DOING IN 8TH GRADE :D

Dropping Marbles in Flower: Crater Lab

Guiding Question: What are the factors that affect the appearance of impact craters? How do scientists use craters to tell the relative age of them?

Hypothesis: Speed, mass, velocity, vastness, ground texture.

Materials:
-Safety Goggles - Tray - Flour - Notebook - Spoon
- Small and large marbles
- Ruler (cm)
- Excel and Word

Terms:
Floor: Bowl shaped or flat,characteristically below surrounding ground level unless fulled in with lava.
Ejecta: Blanket of material surrounding the crater that was excavate during the impact event. Ejecta become thinner away from the crater.
Raised Rim: Rock thrown out of the crater and deposited as a ring-shaped pile of debris at the crater's edge during the explosion and excavation of an impact event.
Walls: Characteristically steep and may have giant stairs called terraces.
Rays: Bright streaks starting from a crater and extending away for great distances. See Copernicus crater for another example.
Central Uplifts: Mountains formed because of the huge increase and rapid decrease in pressure during the impact event. They occur only in the center of raters that are larger than 40 Km diameter. See Tycho crater for another example.

Part 1:

1. Put on goggles and apron. Fill the pan with 2.5 cm of flour.
   
2. Drop a small marble into the flour. What did you observe? Drop another marble again. What happens when they overlap? When you throw it next to one it creates a larger crater and indent.
3. Think about guiding question. What does affect the appearance of an impact crater?
   
4. Decide on which materials you will use and collect them all to take your station. You will make a model to test the guiding question.
   
5. You will need to collect some qualitative (using senses to make observations) and quantitative - numerical data (height of drop, mass of the object, diameter of crater, depth of the crater, length of ejecta if possible to measure, etc...)
   
6. Make a data table in your notebook.
   
7. Run you lab according to the method provided.

Data Table:


Conclusion
One very strange thing that i noticed while making my observations was that the higher you dropped the marble from it would bounce out. This would create to craters, though the second crater was very small compared to the first it was still two craters that were created by just one marble! So in coclusion i think that what really changes the appearance of a crater is the distance, speed, weight, and angle.

Further Inquiry:
Some other things that i would like to try, is measuring how the size of the crater varies, and how using other materials as craters would make an impact. I think that this would be interesting because by changing the material as well as the size the weight/mass would be altered causing, maybe, craters with different appearances.