Science Activities

SEQL, April 26, 2008 Science Activities http://www.umr.edu/~pringle/seql

Experimental Design: Cooling

Every morning the same thing happens: in your rush to get ready for school you forget to make your hot chocolate until just before time it’s to leave. You can’t start your day without hot chocolate, so every morning you burn your tongue.

You could put an ice cube directly in your hot chocolate. You’ve tried that before, and it works, but the hot chocolate doesn’t taste as good diluted. Every time you’ve tried putting it in the refrigerator, you forget to drink it. You need to have that hot chocolate sitting out in the open, cooling enough in the 5 minutes you have left so that when you drink it, you don’t burn your tongue.

“Make it in a plastic cup instead of a styrofoam cup,” dad says, “or put the cup in a bowl of ice cubes.”

“Better yet, put some water in the bowl with the ice cubes,” mom adds.

What to do, what to do…

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 1 1. Preliminary discussion.

I am handing out a selected list of 7th and 8th grade science GLEs. A full list is available here: http://web.mst.edu/~pringle/seql/april_26_2008/grades_7_and_8.pdf

Take 5 minutes to answer the following two questions.

What scientific concepts could be addressed by this scenario?

What GLE’s could be linked to this scenario?

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 2 2. Preliminary experimental design.

You have 5 minutes to have a preliminary experimental design discussion with your group.

In the space below, write a brief description of an experiment you could do, based on the scenario provided.

In the space below, record some of the responses you have heard others express, or some of the thoughts that have popped into your brain regarding this scenario. For example: “this is going to be too complicated to teach,” or “I could sure use some hot chocolate right now,” or “this is going to be too messy to teach.”

In the space below, record some of the responses you think students will have when they hear this scenario.

After we have a class discussion of your responses, take two minutes and write on an orange piece of paper anything that you are confused or concerned about. Do this individually, not as a group. Then give your orange piece of paper to another group.

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 3 3. Experimental design.

Now design an experiment based on this scenario. You might wish to refer to the one-page summary of the Four Questions technique, reproduced on the next page. You might also wish to make sure that your proposed experiment addresses any issues raised by any orange piece(s) of paper your group received. Use this page for notes, a prediction of the outcome you expect from the experiment, lists of variables, procedure, design of data tables and graphs, etc. Blank paper is available if you need more space.

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 4 Experimental design using the Four Question Strategy (Cothron, Giese, and Rezba, Students and Research, 2000). (Web: http://www.kendallhunt.com, search for “Cothron.”)

The Four Questions

Choose a topic you are interested in doing experiments on and then answer questions 1-4.

1. What materials are readily available for conducting experiments on ______.

2. How does/do ______act?

3. How can I CHANGE the set of ______materials to affect the action?

List several ways to change each of the (appropriate) materials you listed in question 1.

4. How can I MEASURE or describe the response of ______to the change?

Choose one of the “behaves” responses in question 2 and list several ways you could measure the “behaves” action.

Design the Experiment

Circle one of the responses to question 3 for your independent variable, and one of the responses to question 4 for your dependent variable.

Constants are all non-circled responses in question 3.

Experiment title: “The Effect of (circled item from question 3) on (circled item from question 4).”

Hypothesis: “If I (say how I am going to change circled item in question 3) the (circled item from question 4) then (state change predicted).”

Design a data table.

Design a procedure.

Do the Experiment

Carry out your experiment.

Make an appropriate graph.

Write summary and conclusions.

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 5 4. Reflection and Discussion

On a green piece of paper, write down something you have learned or mastered as a result of this experiment. I can think of a couple of places where you might have thought “I didn’t expect that to happen.” If you didn’t learn or master anything new, write down something that gave you an opportunity to improve any important skills. Do this individually, not as a group.

As a group, write down on any orange pieces of paper what step(s) you took to resolve the confusion or concern of the author of the orange paper. If you ignored the concerns, say so!

Hand in the orange and green papers.

Each group will have the opportunity to present the results of their experiment: Experimental design Variables Hypothesis Graph Conclusions Extensions

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 6 5. Assessment

NOTE I will provide a graph of some of my data and a quiz based partly on it.

Some quiz questions: did your experiment involve any phase transformations? did your experiment involve any physical changes? chemical changes?

for the graph I have provided--- describe the shape of the graph what was the temperature of the ___ water at ___ time? what would the temperature of the ___ water be at ___ time? (extrapolate/interpolate) what was the rate of cooling at ___ time how long did it take the ___ water to change from ___ temperature to ___ how long would it take the ___ water to change to a temperature of ___ (extrapolate)

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 7 6. Reflection

I will hand out a lesson plan template from a Physics First project (http://www.physicsfirstmo.org). I will assign different parts of this template to each group. I will give you 5 minutes to answer the questions in your part, and we will discuss your answers as a class.

I will give you 5 additional minutes to answer the following two questions, based on what you saw in your experiment today.

What scientific concepts could be addressed by this scenario?

What GLE’s could be linked to this scenario?

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 8 Materials I’ll provide: several spare thermometers ice hot water bowls/other containers for putting cups in ice styrofoam cups plastic cups straws hot chocolate mix marshmallows

SEQL Followup Meeting, April 26, 2008 Page 9