Section 2

Ms. Kuhn wanted to teach us about pH for our first lesson this year. pH is a measure of acidity in a solution. If you measure a solution and the pH is between 1 and 7 it’s acidic, if the pH is between 7 and 14 it’s basic. If the pH is right at 7, which is where the pH of water is, the solution is neutral. There is a more complicated explanation for it and, basically, no one knew what she was talking about. So Ms. Kuhn had us bring in a bunch of stuff to test so we could see the pH differences in different products. I brought in some Pepsi and Lenny brought in orange juice for our samples. The girls all brought in stuff like shampoo and skin lotion. Daryl Jenkins brought in his grandmother’s Bromide medicine. She says she needs it to control her seizures and had a fit when she’d found out he’d taken it. Fortunately Ms Kuhn wouldn’t let him test it when she saw the prescription label on it. (Daryl Jenkin’s a regular down in the principal’s office. I heard he’s on a first name basis with all the secretaries.) We measured the pHs of all this stuff but Ms. Kuhn was worried that we still didn’t understand what pH really was (Click here to see the class results). I think this must be something only new teachers worry about. I mean, look at Mr. Cross; he teaches math and no one knows what he’s talking about and he couldn’t care less. But then, he’ll be retiring soon. Mom says Ms. Kuhn is very idealistic and she only hopes that Lenny and I haven’t completely destroyed her faith in teaching.

Last month we had to learn all about soil. Ms. Kuhn made us bring in all different kinds of dirt from all over the town to test in our lab. We had to learn about how soil is formed, what makes it up and how it erodes and all sorts of stuff like that. We did a really neat experiment where we mixed up our soil samples with water and some water softener and measured the percentages of sand, silt and clay in each sample. (Click here to see the experiment) Ms. Kuhn was really interested in thedifferent pHs of the soils we brought in. She thought maybe if she took us out on a field trip to river where mine drainage comes in it would show us the effects of different pHs in nature and help us finally understand why pH is important

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