A Scientific Term That Should Be More Widely Known: Thermal Energy
​By Stella Rehbein ('20)

​Exothermic and Endothermic Reactions in Everyday Life
​By Chloe Ford ('20)
A connection between a worldwide problem, climate change, and particle motion creates the necessity for understanding the effects of thermal energy to be explained to a larger audience. Thermal energy is one of the many types of energy. Thermal energy is defined as the transfer of heat between particles and this heat transfer will not cease until the particles have reached an equilibrium. ​

Exploration of CFCs
By Becca Horwitz ('18)

The sun is shining as you walk down the street in the middle of the summer without sunscreen! You make it inside the air-conditioned building, successfully avoiding a sunburn. This ability to avoid skin damage from the sun’s ultraviolet light is thanks to the ozone layer in the Earth’s atmosphere. 

What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known? Organic Reactions.
By Zachary Arroyo ('20)

Organic reactions are very important and happen all around us in everyday life. An organic reaction is a combustion reaction containing hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. This type of reaction will always yield both gaseous H2O (water) and gaseous CO2 (carbon dioxide). In order for a combustion reaction to occur, the presence of gaseous O2 (oxygen gas) is necessary. A combustion reaction also always releases energy, usually in the form of heat or light.
Heat transfer is a concept that should be more widely known. It is the most prominent in everyday life and it was one of the most interesting topics for me this year. When people touch something that “feels cold” or “feels hot” it is actually a chemical reaction that is occurring between their hand and the object that “feels hot or cold.” 

What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known? Understanding the Periodic Table and How it Affects Reactions
By Freya Rosenstein ('20)

Not many people (other than Packer’s 10th-12th grade students and science teachers), know how much the Periodic Table can tell you about elements and reactions. At first glance it seems that the most you can learn is an element's weight, name, and the number of protons in each nucleus. However if you know enough about the Periodic Table it can tell you a lot how certain elements will react and behave on their own and together. 

What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known? The Atom.
By Stephan de Brechard ('20)

​The concept of the atom is extremely important in our world today. It guides our thinking towards how everything is composed and people use it as a model of how our world works. Many have questions about our universe and the atom has brought peace as it gives a small insight into our world. We now know that atoms make up all matter.

The Law of Conservation of Mass
By Jess Richman ('20)

Why Isotopes Should be More Widely Known
By Leo Portnoy ('20)
Scientist Antoine Lavoisier experimented burning different substances in air, and he observed that when these substances combined with air they made new materials which weighed more than the original substances. Lavoisier discovered that the reason the new materials weighed more was because the air in which the substances were burned had lost weight. ​
​Isotopes are different atoms of the same element that have have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. This is why all isotopes have the same atomic number, but different mass numbers according to how many neutrons they have. The average atomic mass of an element (which is displayed on the periodic table) is a weighted average of the mass numbers of the naturally occurring isotopes of an element. ​

The Process of Scientific Inquiry
By Izabella Lizarazo ('20)

Electromagnetic Radiation
By Mark Gazzerro ('20)
The Process of Scientific Inquiry, otherwise known as the Scientific Method, should be more widely known to people of all ages. Although it is already widely known, it is a concept that should be brought to the attention of more and a concept that more people need to understand its importance in the world.
Electromagnetic Radiation Electromagnetic radiation is ever present in almost all facets of our lives, and yet most people don’t know or understand what it is. In fact, life as we know it would not be possible without its presence in the universe, as it plays a crucial role in “powering” us and our surroundings.

Women in STEM: Still an Issue at Packer
By Ella Spungen ('19)

The Dangers of CFCs​
By Esme Ostrowitz-Levine ('19)
In the professional and academic fields of science, the deficiency of female representation is one of the most worrying controversies to date. At Packer, the trends in demographics of high level science classes in recent years have prompted similar anxieties in the community. In the professional and academic fields of science...
The ability to keep things cool has been around for around 4,000 years, relying on the scientific principle that solid ice absorbs heat from its surrounds while it melts. This classic theory involves the liquid water produced from the melting process draining away as a new supply of ice is added: solid and liquid phases.