Groton Area School News • 15 of 26 • April-May Edition

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The students are also busy working on their science projects and understanding scientific method. They may work with a partner on their project and many are coming up with some very good experiments.

• Physical Science - Kristen Gonsoir
• Physical science is finishing the year studying chemistry. Students are currently working on learning how to name compounds and write formulas. In the next chapter students will learn how to write chemical equations and then how to balance chemical equations. Students will have the opportunity to complete several chemistry labs. In one lab students will explore different chemical reactions between different solutions and then they will have to determine the identity of an unknown solution based upon their preliminary testing. In another lab students will explore the law of conservation of mass. Groton also had a succesfull year competing in the eCybermission online science fair. The team of Keri Pappas, Erin Smith, and Tage Taylor were the state champions and each team member earned a $1000 savings bond. The team of Nathan Fjelstad, Gabby Kramer, Trey Wright, and Frankie Wuestewald placed second in the online eCybermission and each member earned a $500 savings bond.

• Chemistry I - Kristen Gonsoir
• Chemistry I has just finished studying gas laws and is now moving into studying solutions and solution concentrations. In the next Chemistry I lab, students will determine the molarity of carbon dioxide and sugar in soda pop. It is very interesting to compare the different amounts of sugar in the different kinds of soda. Students will finish the year studying acids and bases.

• Chemistry II - Kristen Gonsoir
• Chemistry II has just completed its survey of the different organic functional groups. The last chapter we will study will explore stereoisomers. Students will learn about chirality and how it can affect the behavior of a material. Chirality refers to a molecules orientation in space. Many compounds exist in multiple three dimensional forms and the different forms can have very different chemical behavior. For example there is s-carvone that smells like caraway and r-carvone that smells like spearmint. In our final lab, students will isolate carvone from caraway seeds.

• Geometry - Mr. Kjellsen
• The Geometry classes recently completed a unit on perimeter and area. They found the perimeter and area of various different polygons. They are now working

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