Activity 8:
1. Choose any Teacher-Submitted Activity from any of the Chemistry Simulations (http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/chemistry ) that we have not yet explored in this course through Activities 1-7 and post your results/data and/or answers.
For this, I decided to look into the Balloons and Buoyancy simulation, since I quite like balloons, and it was something I found to be interested. I chose Patrick Foley’s “Gas Relationships and Buoyancy” activity, and attached are the sheets I filled out.
2. Work with any of the Chemistry Simulations to create your own For Teachers activity and post on your blog. The criteria for this is as follows: a. must identify and meet three (3) Wisconsin Standards for Science (WSS) standards. b. must be original work c. must be scientifically accurate and appropriate for the directed grade level.
I’m hoping to become a teacher for preschool and/or kindergarten children. Therefore, I would want to keep ideas and concepts to a basic understanding so that we can build on them later. I chose to use the balloon and static electricity simulation on the website because I know that I was enamored with balloons as a child, and it’s important to involve both learning and play when children are that young. Granted, we probably wouldn’t be using a simulation like this when they’re in preschool, but this activity could still work for 1st-3rd graders.
Step 1. I would fill up a balloon and ask all the kids to gather around me and watch my experiment.
Step 2. I would rub the balloon on my hair and pull it away, showing that my hair follows it. It’d rub it on my hair again and let go, and show that the balloon sticks to my hair.
Step 3. I would ask what the children think causes this.
Step 4. I would then go on to say that this is called static electricity. “Static electricity is the buildup of electrical charge in an object. So when you’re shuffling on a carpet in your socks and you touch something and it shocks you? That’s static electricity. When you put on a hat in the winter and you take it off and your hair stands on end? Static electricity. Static electricity happens when objects have opposite charges - positive and negative - and are attracted to each other because of it. When one object rubs against another, this electrical charge can be created. Some materials stick more than others because they conduct electricity better - wool (like your shirt) and hair get staticy more easily when rubbed against a balloon than some other objects might.”
Step 5. After explaining, I would get them into groups of 3 or so and give them a balloon.
Step 6. I would then ask the children to find an object in the room to rub the balloon on and see if it sticks.
Step 7. I would then ask a couple of kids to line up with their socks and shuffle across the carpet and see if they can shock me.
Step 8. Once they’ve all had a taste of what static electricity is, I would sit them down and show them the simulation. I would show how the cross means it’s positive, and the line means its negative. I would run the balloon across the shirt and I would show how all the negative signs get transferred to the balloon, and how every time I move the balloon away from the shirt now, it wants to get back to those positive signs.
This activity would cover these WSS standards:
SCI.CC1.K-2
Students recognize that patterns in the natural and human designed world can be observed, used to describe phenomena, and used as evidence.
SCI.SEP1.A.K-2
Students ask simple descriptive questions that can be tested. This includes the following: Ask or identify questions that can be answered by an investigation.
SCI.SEP6.A.K-2
Students use evidence and ideas in constructing evidence-based accounts of natural phenomena. This includes the following: use information from observations (firsthand and from media) to construct and evidence-based account for natural phenomena.
3. Explore the course set of student blogs https://www.tumblr.com/blog/vizchemwinterm2019 and answer the question, "which freezes faster, hot water or cold water?" Your answer should be based on data from your experiments and other student's experiments. Â Also explore the practice of formulating a hypothesis. Did you and your classmates formulate a hypothesis that you then wanted to prove correctly? Â As I look through the blogs, it is clear that there are competing hypotheses.
From looking at the other students’ blogs and their hypotheses for the question, “Which freezes faster, hot water or cold water?” it appears as though there are indeed competing hypotheses. Some said that they believed that the cold water would freeze faster because it was closer to freezing temperature already (like I believed in my experiment), while others believed that it would be the hot water that would freeze first, either because of the Mpemba effect or because of expansion. Some hypotheses were stated with exact measurements, others as more general statements, but each hypothesis seemed to want to be proven. If I hadn’t already, and I came across these hypotheses, I would want to test them to see which hypothesis was correct.
