Halloween Happenings!

It was a pumpkin filled day in Room 15 last Friday. We were able to have a lot of fun with pumpkins while learning at the same time.

We focused on three new vocabulary words:

Mass

Kilogram

and

Circumference

We had six pumpkins in our classroom. One we set aside for later (more on that below), so that left five. Each table group was given a pumpkin. Of course we had to give each of our pumpkins a name!

Our pumpkins were:

Hard Head Bob
Pumpadoo
Buddy
Ginger
and Rusty.

First we had to find the mass of our pumpkin. What does the word mass mean?

Mass tells how much matter is in an object. Figuring out the mass of an object is similar, but not the same as, figuring out the weight of an object. We measured the mass of our pumpkins using kilograms.

What is a kilogram?

A kilogram is a unit we use to measure mass or weight. We made our own kilogram weights!

Then we used the kilogram weights to help us estimate what the mass of our pumpkin might be. We observed our pumpkin closely and discussed with our group what the best estimate might be.

Then we put our estimate in a Google form.

We also learned the word circumference.

What does the word circumference mean?

We observed our pumpkin closely again to try to estimate the circumference. We used centimeters as our unit of measure. We then entered those estimates in our Google Form.

We also counted the number of creases in each pumpkin and entered those in the Google form as well. 

Here are our estimates!

After estimating, it was time to find out what the mass and circumference of each pumpkin actually was. 

We made a prediction. We thought that the larger pumpkins would have more seeds than the smaller pumpkins.

Then it was time to find out! We got inside our pumpkins and counted the seeds together.

Check out our chart below for the actual measurements and how many seeds each pumpkin had. Our prediction was partly correct. One of the larger pumpkins had more seeds. The other did not.

 Finally, it was time for our last pumpkin. 

For this pumpkin, we were going to see how many rubber bands it would take for our pumpkin to explode!

First we predicted:

What do you think the mass of the pumpkin is?

How many rubber bands would we need to put around the circumference of the pumpkin for it to explode?

How long would it take?

Here are our predictions:

Then it was time to find out. Watch the video for our pumpkin explosion!

The results were:

Mass: 8.6 kilograms.
Rubber bands: 288
Time to explosion: 31 minutes.

What is your opinion of our pumpkin investigations?

Have you ever used mass, kilograms, or circumference before? If you have, how have you used it?

Please share in the comment section below.