BM 9-27-10 LC1
Note that the transcript is abridged. Comments such as "May I go to the bathroom?" have been left out.
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[00:04:55.28]Ms. M: One night it rains. When you get to school the next day, you notice a large puddle of
water on the driveway. Later that day when leaving school, you notice that the puddle is gone. What could
have happened to the puddle? Now, wow, look at all these hands, but you don't get to talk first. Open up
your journal, and think.
About 5 minutes later the class begins discussing the question:
[00:09:33.02]Hannah: I think the puddle was evaporated by water, which means the water floated up into
the clouds. Where it just sat there until the clouds collects enough water to make it rain. And then the
process starts again. Then I drew a picture.
[00:10:04.11]Seth: Maybe somebody drank it.
[00:10:15.20]Emma: It could have run down the drain.
[00:10:19.24]Agatha: It could have been dried up by the sun.
[00:10:27.22]Nicole: Animals could have drank it, like ants and stuff.
[00:10:44.07]Robert: The water was evaporated by the sunlight. I drew a picture of the steps that
happened.
[00:10:50.19]Ms. M: So can you describe to us your steps?
[00:10:53.15]Robert: It's raining, then the puddle comes, then it makes a puddle. Then the sun comes out
and evaporates it, and then there's no more water.
[00:11:04.24]Andrew: The puddle evaporated from the heat and went into the clouds.
[00:11:18.25]Ralph: The wind could have blown the water into the stream?
[00:11:45.21]Aidan: The puddle evaporated into the clouds, and it will come down again in the rain in
what's called the water cycle.
[00:12:10.09]Ms. M: Any other thoughts? Alright, so let me ask this question then. Quite a few of you
mentioned the word 'evaporated,' or 'evaporate,' something along those lines. In fact, I saw somebody had
written down the word 'vaporized,' I think, you had written that word down? So who can explain, what
does that mean? What does that mean? Beau?
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[00:12:54.25]Beau: It means to dry up a fluid.
[00:12:58.17]Ms. M: Dry up, so it means it dried up, is that all it means?
[00:13:06.10]Student: To disappear, to make something disappear.
[00:13:12.10]Beau: The puddle, something caused the puddle to turn to water vapor, and go up to the
clouds.
[00:13:25.14]Ms. M: Any comments about that? So explain, Beau, further then, take it further, how does
the sun, what role does the sun have to do with this?
[00:13:40.19]Beau: The sunlight dries it up, and then the water turns into water vapor. And the water
vapor goes up to the clouds, and then it comes down as precipitation.
[00:13:50.03]Ms. M: Are there others of you who have heard this before? So do you want to add to that?
Does someone want to add to that? Does that really explain it? Does that explain it for you? Or is there
something that seems to be missing? Donald?
[00:14:08.03]Donald: It could be really hot outside, it could be cloudy. But since it's hot, it can still
vaporize into the ground. And then it'll just leave a dark spot.
[00:14:20.28]Ms. M: So vaporizes into the ground?
[00:14:23.25]Donald: And make a big dark spot.
[00:14:28.06]Dez: Let's say it was on, some people have concrete as their driveway, and then right next to
it, they have grass. If there was a puddle in the grass, but it was a dirt-type thing, it went into the grass. It
could have, sometimes when water goes into dirt and it sits on the leaves, and that's what it could have
done.
[00:15:16.14]Ella: I was thinking sometimes you put water on your skin, it sinks into your skin, your skin
gets wet. I've seen that happen with concrete, too, it sinks down into the little holes in the concrete
sometimes.
[00:15:41.21]Ms. M: So are all of these ideas that were mentioned, all these things that could have
happened to the water, are they all feasible? I mean, are they all reasonable things that could have
happened to the water?
[00:15:59.07]Hannah: I just thought, there were other explanations that a kid could have jumped into it, I
thought those were reasonable. But I thought we're in science, so I thought using evaporated, scientific
words, you know? I thought, when the water runs up into the clouds, that was the first immediate thing I
thought about when.
[00:16:40.00]Ms. M: That's an interesting way to say it, that the water 'runs up' into the clouds. I get this
image of little water droplets with legs running up and down. So I was just wondering, what did you mean
by that?
[00:16:54.10]Hannah: The water kind of floats, but it takes, if you went to school, that probably took about
7 or 8 hours. So then when he got back, the water gets into little probably microscopic little sections, and
then it floats up, kind of floats up. People can't see it, but if you leave a cup out for the night or for the day,
it will probably evaporate. And the water will, it won't, you can't see it, so it can't go in drops. But it can
go in little sections, little pieces at a time, or maybe all at one time go up.
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[00:17:52.28]Aidan: I think Hannah, she had a good theory that, you never know, he could have, some
people have longer school days. Like when you get older and you're going to the junior high and high
school, you usually have to go to school 7:30 and then you get out around 3. So it could be longer. Or you
could be in elementary, the person could have been going to elementary school, and he could have had a
short day. So you don't really know, but you can estimate he's been there for about 7 or 8 hours.
[00:18:34.14]Ms. M: So to condense that down, what you're saying, that length of time is somehow a
factor in what happens, so you think that matters?
[00:18:50.09]Aidan: Because it doesn't take just a second for it to evaporate, it takes a while. So if it's all
gone, it cold probably be about 10 hours, so he had to be at school longer than a few hours.
[00:19:20.16]Megan: Also covering up the water, since the heat lifts up the water vapor, it brings it up the
clouds, and the cycle starts again. Because when the clouds have too much rain in it, it comes down raining
when it's too heavy with all the water.
[00:20:51.11]Seth: I don't want to get into a debate with them at all, but. I think that maybe multiple
things could have happened. Maybe someone did jump in the puddle, then it got smaller, and then it
evaporated, to make it go faster. Or maybe an animal drank it and then half of it's gone, and then a kid
jumped in it.
[00:21:15.01]Ms. M: You said you didn't want to get into a debate, is there a problem why, is there a
reason why you don't want to get into a debate?
[00:21:29.03]Seth: I don't know.
[00:22:13.07]Dez: If someone had jumped into the water, wouldn't it make more amounts of puddles?
Because then he would jump into it and then it scatter everywhere, splashed, and then it would make little
puddles? And if an animal drink it, I don't understand, because if an animal drank it, let's say a squirrel
drank it.
[00:23:25.01]Jacob: If it goes off, if a kid jumped in the puddle, it would go in different sections, and it's
easy to evaporate that. Because it's not in a big clump where it could join together, and you get one
(inaud). If the heat goes around the edges, it can evaporate better. But if it's just one big puddle, you can't
get to little stuff that's in the big one, so.
[00:24:33.22]Nick: Do you know like when you pour water on something, it changes, like water on
cement? Maybe if the water maybe sunk into the ground, and if you look right there, the color might be
changed. And then, yeah, like that.
[00:25:00.02]Hannah: I think if someone jumped in it, to add on to Jacob's answer. I think when someone
jumps in it, the little splatters, I think those make it easier for it to evaporate. Because they're so small, that
maybe the little drops or sections of the puddle can raise better. So then I think the bigger it is, the more,
how it's the big puddle. And then from the edges, it evaporates from the edges and then gets smaller. So I
think when there's the little ones, the edges, there's little small edges, so it takes less time to evaporate.
[00:26:03.03]Ella: I was thinking about the animal one. It's probably not very likely that an animal could
have drank it. Because animals usually drink it with their tongues, and they can't drink a little puddle.
Because it's too shallow, it's hard for them to get it up with their tongues.
[00:27:39.02]Joey: What if they went into the driveway, and the puddle got hit by the tires. And then it
could maybe roll off the driveway into one of those streams.
[00:27:59.01]Aidan: About the animal drinking it part, maybe an animal could have drank it. But a dog,
someone could have been walking their dog. And like Ella said, sometimes it absorbs into your skin, the
water. Like when you're out of the ocean, your skin gets all wrinkly, and you're in the bath, it absorbs. It
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could be the same thing, a dog's fur or an animal's fur could also absorb it because it absorbs water. So a
dog could hold most of it and then gone to the house and then left. And then it would generally a little left,
so that could evaporate up.
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