For science in plp we have just finished our unit about atoms and everything that surrounds them. But lets take it from the beginning. For the first day of our unit, our science teacher Mr. Gross made us create a mind map of everything we new about atom’s this way he could know where to start.
The next day Mr. Gross introduced us to our new project. It was a group project with two people per group. We needed to create and film an animated movie that is 3 minutes in length, the video was supposed to show how covalent and ionic bonds work with the characters being atoms. After we were briefed with the project we got to choose our partners. I ended up being in a group with my friend Luca Jacoe. We then decided what we wanted our project to look like. We wanted to use a unique style of animation that doesn’t get used very often, we chose paper animation. It would work with a camera overhead taking photos and in post production we would make it stop motion. After we discussed our project Mr. Gross showed us a cool experiment.
Mr. gross showed us a chemical reaction between sodium metal and water. After, he talked about chemical reactions and how they work.
The next day Mr. Gross showed us a cool website where you could build your own atom. He gave us a worksheet and let us fill it out using the atom builder. It was so much fun because you could just mess around and discover different types of atoms and how they work.
We then figured out that the representation of the atoms we were making were called Bohr models which showed the electrons, atoms, protons, and neutrons while still being represented in a visual way.
After about a week of learning about atoms and their parts we finally did a quiz.
We were supposed to create Bohr models of atoms and the difference between them.
The next day we started learning about the differences between ionic sand covalent bonds (which is the whole basis of our video project).
Once we done learning the basis of electrons, protons, neutrons, covalent, and ionic bonds we started work on our project.
Since we already knew what style of animation we would use we needed to start working on our script.
Me and Luca wanted to make the movie like a love story because bonds are kind of like marriages. We wanted to make the story about one atom that is in the hospital because they are missing an electron. another atom who was in the hospital getting a flu shot sees this atom and realizes that they have a spare electron that they could give them. They then fall in love and become an ionic bond. Now that we had the basis of our story finished we needed to expand in our script. I gave Luca the job of writing the script because she is good with stories.
After Luca was finished writing the script all that was left was to find a day to film. We ended up filming our video on Saturday because we had plans all other days. The filming went without a hitch! Everything went by really fast since it was basically just taking photos. The only thing left to do was for me to edit the footage and add the voiceover. It was pretty simple when it came to editing, all I needed to do was just import the photos and make the photos last 0.25 seconds to make it look stop motion. Then we realized that we forgot to add anything about covalent bonding so I quickly did a voiceover saying that the atoms ionic bond reminded him of his friends who bonded covalently after they went to camp. I then explained the difference between the ionic and covalent bonds. Finally! Our video was finished! We then presented it in front of the class.
After everyone finished showing their videos Mr. Gross gave us the same mind map we did at the beginning of the unit. We then added everything we learned at the end and the differences between the two were incredible!
I absolutely loved this unit. It was so interesting and fun learning about the stuff that makes up our universe! I cant wait to find out what we will be doing for the next term!