Audience Awarness 17 May 2007

One of our discussions in class last week focused on audience awareness. I had a discussion with a girl this week about cars and she mentioned how I was the only one who could get on her level and explain the problem it made me think about audience awareness and how we communicate to an audience. Therefore this week I have decided to try another experiment in audience awareness and try to explain Chemical Bonding to a group of 5th graders.
We all know that everything is made of something smaller. For example your pants may be made of a button, thread and a zipper. But what is the thread made of? Scientists would say atoms. Atoms are like super small balls that we cannot see with our eyes but make up everything around us. You may not believe that such small things make up the world around us because you cannot see them but imagine you are standing on a big grassy field. If I drop one snowflake in the middle you cannot see it, right? But what if I drop lots and lots of snowflakes all over the place? Then you can see all the snow. The same happens with atoms, lots and lots of them makes something like the thread of our pants that we can see. In order to make all the stuff we see around us the atoms stick to together in special ways. Each atom has something around it called electrons. Think of it like this if we put tape around one ball and Velcro around another the tape ball will stick really well to the wall while the Velcro ball would stick really well to the carpet. You probably already know that cookies and bread have a lot of the same ingredients but taste very different. That is because like with the balls the sugar, flour, butter etc. stick together in different ways. All of the different ingredients are like different balls or different snowflakes that hook together in different ways in order to make bread for your sandwich or a cookie for desert. Scientists call this Chemical Bonding. The way all these different atoms stick together makes up everything you see. So the next time you put on your pants or make cookies you can remember that if it were not for atoms sticking together your life would be very boring.