Analyzing Our Dry Ice Data

My students successfully created dry ice bubbles out of three various solutions last week.  They created a bubble solution out of lemon scented Dawn dish soap, another out of Palmolive, a mixture of the two, a solution with additional glycerin, and a final one out of school brand soap.  They placed the dry ice in bubble machines that they engineered and created bubbles full of carbon dioxide from the dry ice.

Soon, I watched as my fifth graders were gleefully bouncing bubbles on cloth and counting the number of bounces per bubble.  We did multiple trials in our science inquiry and soon had data for all soap types.  What do you do with gifted students and lots of data?  You analyze of course!

Today we began to analyze the data using measurement standards.  Students found data landmarks like the mean, median, mode, range, maximum and minimum.  They also began to graph their data in line plots, box and whisker plots, and also histograms in order to prove which dish soap brand was the best.  Students examined their averages and maximums and looked for outliers in their data to prove their thinking and push their analysis to the next level. 

We are still finishing our conclusion paragraphs tomorrow and making sure our findings are scientifically accurate.  This was a great way to go deeper in the measurement standards as the students were able to apply their mathematical understanding to a new concept as they engineered the boo bubbler, created bubble solution mixtures with L, mL, grams, and weight, and now are graphing and interpreting findings from labs.