We completed our samples last week, but needed the cement to fully cure, so on Monday of this week we spent considerable time working on our lesson. We finalized the idea and began working out details. Our lesson will be built around Newton’s Law of Cooling and specific heat. Students will model the cooling of a cup of hot chocolate with a regression and determine how long one should wait to drink it at its optimal temperature. In addition, students will discover how much heat is required to bring the hot chocolate back up to its optimal temperature after it has cooled to room temperature. On Tuesday, we continued to work on the lesson while also running compression tests on some of our samples, as some of them cured. On Wednesday and Thursday, we continued running compression tests on our samples (see photo, below). Lauren got introduced to the scanning electron microscope, and she used it to get a closer view of our many specimens. Brian began the data analysis portion of the research and began investigating the compression testing results by crunching numbers, creating graphs, and looking for correlations. To close out the week on Friday, Brian completed the compression testing and put finishing touches on the data while Lauren finished gathering electron microscopy images. Next week we will conclude our RET experience by finishing our lesson, writing the research paper, showcasing highlights in the poster, and wrapping it all up with a presentation on Friday.