Food Chains

Today we learned about food chains, so we could use this information to help us with our Ecology Assignments.

Food chains represent the energy flow and feeding relationships between a group of organisms in a particular habitat or ecosystem:

All food chains start with a producer. They are able to make their own food using sunlight, carbon dioxide and water; this process is called photosynthesis.

Adaptations

As part of our assignment, we need to evaluate the adaptations of our New Zealand/Aotearoa organism. Today, we learned about adaptations and have to finish this work for homework:

Elements - Metals and Non-Metals

Elements and Pure Substances

Over the last couple of weeks, we have learned how to separate mixtures. We have been separating them into their pure substances.

Today, we learned what some of those pure substances are:

• elements
• compounds

Some elements exist as atoms, while some exist as molecules. The elements are all found on the Periodic Table, which has their special symbol.

Compounds are formed when different elements react. This means they join together chemically, forming bonds between the atoms. Compounds can be molecules (like some elements) or they can be ionic. We learn more about these in the next few years of Science and Chemistry...

Our task today was to classify all matter from what we have learned in the last few weeks and in today's lesson.

Chromatography

Chromatography is a method used to separate differently-coloured pigments.

We did an experiment to help us understand what chromatograhy really is and how it works. Thank you to Angus and Flynn for the results:

The Set Up (BEFORE)

The Results - the colours have separated (AFTER)

Separating Solutions - Evaporation and Distillation

First, we had to DESCRIBE Evaporation and Distillation:

For homework, we need to EVALUATE wen each method should be used:

Evaporation

Today, we learned about one way to separate solutions: evaporation.

We did an experiment (p36 in the Scipad) to help create a sequence to explain how evaporation works.

This was our apparatus. We have to DESCRIBE what happened
and EXPLAIN how this worked.

One of the groups' results - it is a solid now, not a solution!