Mole Projects!!!

On Wednesday March 1st, Ms. Klaves’s Intro to IB Chemistry classes submitted their mole projects. Students were tasked to create a project that represents a scientist that had a great impact on the science we learn about today.

The Mole Project is all about doing research about where the information students learn about in school is obtained. This idea relates back to the Theory of Knowledge class here at Case. The main philosophy of that class is finding out the nature of our knowledge and how that relates back to the main objective of the Mole Project.

“The idea behind Theory of Knowledge in IB is that you know how knowledge has transformed over time,” said Mrs. Klaves.

Klaves also stressed the point that all information we learned in class has come from a scientist somewhere in history.

“In science it is all based on past research somebody at somebody has done research to find something out and we are discovering things to advance or confirm that and that's how we innovate,” said Klaves.

When the project was first assigned students were given a list of 350 scientists to choose from, or they could come up with their own scientist they think made an impact and have it approved by Ms. Klaves. Students were given many different opportunities to represent their scientist creatively.

An example of this is, a student created a stuffed mole to represent paleoanthropologist, Mary Leakey. They added glasses, and a denim jacket to their mole because she was an archaeologist and spent most of her time outside. Mary Leakey discovered a lot of evidence disproving what scientists had previously thought about early human ancestors and how they acted. To represent this in their project they added a miniature bone as a prop and wrote a short bibliography about Mary Leakey.

“The projects are meant to inspire creativity and research, and both need to be well thought to get a good grade,” said Klaves.

The first was to create a stuffed mole out of fabric and write a bibliography about the scientist they chose to research. A second option was to create a mole tune, this includes writing a song or rap to an existing beat or music that is 45 lines long.

Other options included writing a poem, story, play, or a paper about the scientist the students chose. Poems were required to be 45 lines and three pages, and include information as to why their scientist was important to science. More hands on opportunities included filming a short movie which could be about twelve minutes long and include two scientists, or they could create a game to represent their scientist.