BATTERIES of YESTERDAY and TODAY + Give Your Students a “Jolt” with a Fun Innovation Challenge – Inspired by Alessandro Volta’S Original Battery!
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Lesson + BATTERIES OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY + Give your students a “jolt” with a fun innovation challenge – inspired by Alessandro Volta’s original battery! Objective Session 1: 75 minutes Session 2: 75 minutes Students will explore the Kick off the lesson with a Ask students to recall the reading oxidation/reduction chemical 1 discussion. What kinds of 1 passage from the first session. reaction firsthand and design technology make a cell phone Once the battery had been invented, an engineering solution for a portable? Welcome all responses other innovators began to wonder real-world problem. and narrow focus on the cell phone’s about how basic battery principles battery. What kinds of engineering could be built and improved upon. innovations and advanced Have your students examine some NGSS Standards manufacturing techniques might of the ways scientists are innovating HS.Chemical Reactions have taken place to create a battery new materials and power sources. HS-PS1 Matter and Its Interactions that is compact, lightweight, and Download and deliver the HS-ETS1-2 Engineering Design long-lasting enough to carry around Engineering Innovative Materials in your pocket? What are some of 2 lesson. Materials the other places batteries are used? Session 1 Think large and small. Have students complete the accompanying Drive Progress • The Power of Batteries Distribute The Power of Batteries 3 activity sheet and consider some of reading passage reading passage and Build a 2 the real-world constraints associated • Build a Battery activity sheet Battery activity sheet. Have students with innovation. To build a voltaic pile: read the passage and complete the questions on the activity sheet. • Pennies minted prior to 1982 Session 3: 60–120 minutes • Nickels Supply groups of students with Encourage students to see • Scissors 3 the materials required to create themselves in the role of inventor • Thick paper towels 1 their own voltaic pile. Troubleshoot and innovator. What kind of advanced • Pickle juice as needed. manufacturing solution could they • Plastic clamps develop to address a real-world • Auto-ranging voltmeter with 200 Wrap up with a discussion. What problem? mV DV measurement capabilities 4 are some of the limitations of the voltaic pile? What are some of Distribute the Innovators of Session 2 the obvious reasons it isn’t a suitable Tomorrow Contest entry forms • Engineering Innovative Materials 2 choice for powering a cell phone and Contest Entry Planner. Support lesson and Drive Progress or using in place of a car’s battery? students as they create and submit activity sheet (bit.ly/2ytc6t1) Prompt for ideas like: requiring their entries. Session 3 human intervention to keep the • Innovators of Tomorrow Contest electrolyte moistened, voltage, MORE LESSONS AND ACTIVITIES entry forms doesn’t recharge itself, size, shape, For more innovation inspiration, etc. Ask students to consider how introduce students to an invention • Contest Entry Planner the needs and constraints of a design designed to rid the world’s oceans of problem are important to solve for plastic (bit.ly/2SZ7XXx) and robotics when engineering and how these technology that allows humans and same needs and constraints can be robots to work together in new ways used to drive innovation forward. (bit.ly/331urvn). Activity Name BUILD A BATTERY Read The Power of Batteries passage and answer the questions below on a separate sheet. Then, work in groups to build a simple battery of your own. Respond to the reading 1 Choose three of the bolded terms in the passage. Use plain language to explain their meaning. 2 In your opinion, what was the most important innovation in batteries? Explain your thinking. Build and test 3 Assemble your materials and follow the steps below. Materials: four pennies (minted prior to 1982), four nickels, paper towel, pickle juice, plastic clamp, scissors, voltmeter. a) Cut paper towel into squares roughly the size of a penny and dip in brine (paper towel should be damp, not dripping). b) Create one voltaic cell by stacking a nickel, a layer of brine-soaked paper towel, and a penny. Clamp your cell and use the voltmeter to measure its voltage. c) Unclamp and continue adding cells to your pile following the towel-nickel-towel-penny-towel-nickel pattern. Re-clamp and test with the voltmeter as you add more cells. d) What are your findings? Roughly how much voltage does each cell contribute to your battery? About how many cells would it take to send current to a 19-volt laptop? Create a diagram 4 Now that you have seen it in action, draw a diagram of a voltaic pile powering an electronic device of your choice. Use the images and the information in the reading passage to help you. Be sure to: a) Label the following: voltaic pile, one voltaic cell, electrolyte, cathode, anode, wire, electronic device, positive terminal, negative terminal. b) Use arrows to demonstrate the flow of electrons. READING PASSAGE The Power of Batteries Learn the fascinating history and science behind this groundbreaking electrical invention. Batteries power so many things the copper in a process called The Dreaded in your everyday life that you reduction (you can remember this Dead Battery probably don’t think twice about as: Because electrons are negative, How annoying is them. Around 1800, an Italian they reduce positive charge). it when your cell physicist and chemist named phone battery dies? Alessandro Volta created a simple Oxidation reduction is an With any battery, battery called the voltaic pile, but exothermic reaction, meaning that eventually the before then there was no such energy is released as the reaction anode has no more thing as portable electricity. In occurs. Volta’s discovery meant that electrons to supply, his experiments, Volta found that potential chemical energy could and the battery will stacked disks of copper and zinc, be “stored” in a battery and used die or go flat. Some separated by cloth or paper soaked in the form of electrical energy batteries, like the in a salty solution, would produce whenever the time was right. one in your phone, a small amount of electrical energy The more voltaic cells that were are designed to (see diagram on next page). The stacked, the greater the voltage. be rechargeable. energy was the result of a chemical The same reaction known as oxidation MODERN INNOVATORS electrochemical reduction, or redox for short. The invention of the battery made processes that power supply portable, but the allowed the battery practical applications of the voltaic IN THE CHEMISTRY LAB to supply power If you connect the positive and cell were very limited. Enter the are reversed using negative terminals of a voltaic cell innovators who continued to an external power with a wire, the zinc begins to lose improve the battery by engineering supply (such as its electrons in a process called and experimenting with new plugging a cell oxidation. They then move toward materials, creating batteries that phone into its were more reliable, more powerful, charger). The easier to use, and longer-lasting. reverse flow of Notable advances in battery Photo: Solar battery: Andreas Schlegel/fStop/Offset; Various batteries: fmajor/iStock Various batteries: Photo: Solar battery: Andreas Schlegel/fStop/Offset; electrons restores science include: the battery’s power- The Daniell Cell: the first practical giving abilities. source of portable power that provided a longer and more reliable current than Volta’s. Example application: telegraphy. Lead-Acid Battery: the first battery that could be recharged. Example application: car battery. continued Zinc-Carbon Battery: the first process, though, there will dry-cell battery. Unlike wet be setbacks along the way. cells, the zinc-carbon battery Batteries have their share of would not spill and did not have problems, including both safety to be kept upright. Example and environmental concerns. application: flashlight. A battery that has significant energy density, for instance, will Alkaline Battery: achieved cause a dangerous explosion better energy density (could if its cathode and anode store more energy per unit of accidentally come into contact. What’s a frog got to volume) than its predecessors. Over their history, batteries do with it? Do a quick Example application: television have been manufactured using online search to find out remote. heavy metals such as mercury how the very curious and lead along with other behavior of a dead frog Lithium-Ion Battery: significant components. They must be inspired Volta’s battery advancements in energy density recycled responsibly because experiments. and the ability to recharge more they pose a threat to humans than a thousand times. Example and the natural environment. application: cell phone. Are you the next innovator? Or what about a battery that In the future, you may be using How could you make a battery could recharge an infinite batteries that are paper-thin that is more environmentally number of times? Challenge and have the ability to recharge friendly? A battery that holds yourself to come up with the hundreds of thousands of a charge longer that is lighter, next great idea! times. As with any innovation smaller, safer, or stronger? The Anatomy of a Battery A battery you bought at the store last week and the earliest versions of batteries have the same three components in common. Check out the diagram below: When a wire closes the circuit or connects the cathode and the anode, electrons: a) move into the wire from the anode, b) power a device, and c) continue on their way back to the cathode. Cathode (+) Voltaic Pile — The positive terminal, The voltaic pile is made up of individual cells that where are stacked to increase the amount of voltage. positive ions are housed Positive Terminal The cathode in a Cathode + voltaic cell is made of Electrolyte — copper.