Activity 1 - Light Absorption

Materials

• Thermometers, heat lamp, white paper, black paper,
• Paper, and pencil for each group.
• Lab note

Focus questions:

1. Is there a difference between wearing black or white colors in the sun?
2. What is evidence?
3. How can we use evidence to answer questions?

Learning outcomes:

1. Investigate, collect, and communicate evidence on how white and black affect temperature.

Exploration -

1. Put learners in pairs.
2. Is there a difference between wearing black or white colors in the sun?
3. Ask. If they dressed in different colors would it cause them to be warmer or colder? I think ... I had on a black sweat shirt once on a sunny day and it was hot.
4. Display their answers so all can view them.
5. Ask. What causes you to believe some of these answers more than others? Circle and call attention to answers that are based on observable evidence.
6. Ask. What do these have the others do not? Support with evidence and reasons.
7. Ask. How could we investigate or experiment to see if color might make a difference? Accept all answers and decide on an investigation like: wrap two thermometers in two different colors of paper or in white and back paper.
8. Ask. Do you think there would be a difference in how we wrap the thermometers or would it be okay to just set the paper on top of the thermometers?
9. Ask. How could you support their answers/predictions? Find evidence
10. Decide together how to set up investigations or experiments. Some groups could place paper on top and others wrap, some could use black and white paper and others other colors.
11. Tell. Write your procedure in your lab book.
12. Sample procedure:
    1. Record the temperature on each thermometer.
    2. Put sheet of white paper in front of one thermometer and black paper in front of the other.
    3. Repeat the same procedure only wrap two thermometers in the same kinds of paper.
    4. Shine heat lamp on each sheet of paper equally from 40-50 cm away.
    5. After two minutes, check and record temperatures again.
    6. Repeat two more minutes and record again.
13. You can suspend a heat lamp or light bulb, that gets hot, so it shine straight down, then you can put the base of each thermometer in a circle around where the light shines so they are equal distance from the light. Then cover and wrap with paper as decided.
14. Collect data and display it so everyone can view.

Invention -

1. Review data and discuss with the learners.
2. Compare changes in first to last temperature readings.
3. Ask. What can you say about the effect of color in this activity?
4. How can you support your answers with evidence?
5. What did you learn about experimenting, reasoning, and evidence?

Discover

1. How do people who know that color makes a difference in temperature use that information to help us?
2. How do people use experimenting, reasoning, and evidence? to help them?
3. How can you use this to help you outside of school?
   

Activity 2 - Catch a Wave!

Materials:

• Spoon, two tin cans, plastic wrap, sugar sprinkles, cotton ball, thread, tuning fork, and jump rope for each group.
• Lab notes

Focus questions:

1. What is sound?
2. How does it move?
3. How can we investigate it?

Learning outcomes:

1. Investigate, collect, and communicate evidence on how intensity (volume) of a sound is related to the amount of energy used to create the sound.

Exploration

1. Ask. What is sound? Accept all answers.
2. How does it move? Accept all answers.
3. Ask if they can think of how we might be able to see if moves and how? Accept all answers.
4. Ask. Do your think sound waves can cause objects to move?
5. Ask. How could we support your answers/predictions. Lead them to doing an investigation or experiment and collecting evidence.
6. Set up three stations:
   • Station One: Tin Can 
     a. One can covered in plastic wrap and sprinkle sugar on top of plastic wrap. 
     b. Bang spoon against bottom of other can while holding it near the top of the first can.
     c. Collect evidence about what happens to the sugar. 
     d. Ask: Does a loud bang have the same results as a soft bang.
   • Station Two: Tuning Fork
     a. Hang cotton ball on a thread near a tuning fork.
     b. Vibrate the tuning fork.
     c. Record evidence about what happens to each object.
   • Station Three: Jump Rope
     a. Have partners hold ends of jump rope.
     b. One partner hold one end still while the other partner moves their end up and down.
     c. Ask: How can you increase the number of wavelengths? Does it take more energy to make fast waves or slow waves?
7. Let students rotate through each station and explore.
8. Share and display results.
   

Invention

1. Recall and review.
2. Do sound waves move?
3. What evidence supports the idea that sound waves move?
4. Ask. What other situations are there where they have seen sound cause movement (speakers on electronic equipment, vibrations of objects or walls).
5. What did you discover about sound and volume?

Discover

1. Describe where sound is used in our lives and any evidence that it moves.
2. How can sound and volume be so powerful that it can harm us?
3. Are there ways we can protect ourselves from sound waves harming us?
   

Activity 3 - Insulator Tests

Materials:

• Several small identical cans with lids (at least two for each group),
• Different insulating materials, such as wool, cotton, foil, carpet, newspaper,
• String, scissors, tape, measuring cup, thermometer, stop watch, paper and pencil
• Lab notes

Focus questions:

1. What materials are used to keep hot and cold food hot and cold?
2. How can we investigate it?

Learning outcomes:

• Investigate different kinds of materials and decide which would make good insulators and why.

Exploration

1. Put learners in pairs.
2. Tell. Think about their lunch or when they went on a picnic.
3. What did you do to keep things hot/cold?
4. This is called insulating.
5. Ask. What materials do you think make good insulators?
6. Show the materials you gathered to investigate as insulators,
7. Ask. What do you think will happen when each of these is wrapped around a can, secured with string or tape, and tested as an insulator.
8. Ask. What would be a fair investigation?
9. Would it be fair to use different thickness of materials?
10. Should we try to use similar thicknesses of material?
11. Ask. How do we compare each material?
12. Suggest they leave one can unwrapped as the control.
13. Fill each container, including the control can, with the same amount of hot water (water must be same temperature in each can).
14. Take the temperature of water in each can every minute and record results.
15. Continue doing this until the temperature stays steady. Record results.
16. Prepare a way to present your evidence (graph, chart, etc.).
    

Invention

1. Bring the class back together and have them share their data.
2. Ask. What is it about the materials that makes them good insulators or not?
3. Ask. What evidence do you have to support your ideas?
4. More information - Energy transfer - heat and temperature
   

Discovery

1. Discuss how where else there is insulation used in our lives?
2. Are there ways we can improve our lunch box insulation?

Activity 4 - Rock Hardness

Materials

• Eight rocks per group, magnifying lenses, pennies, knives, steel fingernail file, diamond.
• Lab notes -

More information on rocks and Earth's materials:

• Rocks grades 1-2*
• Rocks grades 3-4*
• Rocks grades 6-8*
• Rock cycle -
  

Focus questions:

1. What does hard as a rock mean?
2. How hard are rocks?
3. How can we investigate them

Learning outcomes:

1. Learners will explore and explain how rocks vary in hardness.

Exploration

1. Ask. When people say something is as hard as a rock, what are they actually saying?
2. How hard are rocks?
3. Are some rocks harder than others?
4. Ask. How they could support their answers/predictions.
5. Lead them to doing an experiment and collecting evidence.
6. Label each rock with a letter from A to H.
7. Tell. You will examine each rock with magnifying lenses and record its colors.
8. Then you will perform scratch tests using fingernail, a penny, stainless steel bread knife, file, and diamond.
9. Record your evidence on the chart in your lab notes.

Rock	A	B	C	D	E	F
Rub with finger
Fingernail
Penny
Knife
Steel File
Diamond

10. Use evidence to order rocks according to hardness.
11. Have each groups display their order for all to see.

Invention

1. Bring the class back together.
2. Have them share their evidence for each rock and explain how they know each has different degrees of hardness.
3. Ask. How can you support your answers? with evidence of which substance scratched the rock and if it did scratch it how easy it was to scratch and how deep a scratch it made.
4. What did you learn about investigating, experimenting, reasoning, and evidence?

Discover

1. How could you use what you learned?
2. How do scientists use what you learned?

Activity 5 - Stopping Mold Cold!

Materials:

• Bread, plastic bags, water, access to refrigerator and warm, dark place.
• Lab notes -

Related activities

• Animals, fungi, & lichen my neighborhood & maybe beyond
• Fungi & Lichen fact sheet

Focus questions:

1. Why is it that sometimes things mold and sometimes they don't?
2. How can we investigate?

Learning outcomes:

1. Investigate and collect evidence on the affects of temperature and moisture on the rate of growing mold on bread and use that evidence to determine a relationship for these variables.

Exploration

1. Organize learners into pairs and groups.
2. Ask. Have you ever seen moldy food in your kitchen?
3. What places is mold more likely to develop?
4. Which foods grow mold more quickly?
5. Ask. How could you support your answers/predictions. accept all answers
6. Lead them to investigating or setting up an experiment and collecting evidence.
7. Possible procedure:
8. Create four environments:
   1. Environment One:
      a. Place dry bread in plastic bag and tie it closed.
      b. Place the bag in a refrigerator or cold place.
   2. Environment Two:
      a. Lightly spray bread with water and bag it.
      b. Place the bag in refrigerator or cold place.
   3. Environment Three:
      a. Place dry bread in a plastic bag.
      b. Place bag in a warm, dark place.
   4. Environment Four: 
      a. Lightly spray the bread with water and place in a bag.
      b. Place bag in a warm, dark place.
9. After one week, compare results and record evidence of mold growth.

Invention

1. Order the evidence (test breads) from the fastest mold grower to the slowest mold grower.
2. What does mold feed on? bread
3. What evidence did you use to support that answer? there was mold on the bread and not on the containers
4. Ask: What environmental factors support mold growth?  
5. What evidence do you have to suggest this?
6. How does mold change its environment?
7. What causes mold to grow better?
8. What evidence did you use to support that answer?
9. Where would you put food that you don’t want to mold?

Discover

1. How can you use this information?
2. How would a scientist use this information?
   

Activity 6 - Taste and the tongue

Materials

• A variety of food samples (one set for each group), paper cups for each food, toothpicks, blindfolds, water, and diagram of regions of the tongue, chart paper and markers.
• Food sample could be a variety of snack foods or candies.
  • sweet
  • salty
  • sour
  • bitter
• Lab notes

Background information on the anatomy of the tongue

The tongue is a muscular organ in the mouth. It has several uses, one is taste. Its rough texture is caused by tiny bumps called papillae where thousands of taste buds are located on their surface. Taste buds are collections of nerve-like cells that connect to nerves running into the brain. The brain interprets the senses they transmit to the brain as the common tastes of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty. A fifth, umami (savory), results from tasting glutamate (also in MSG). All parts of the tongue can detect these four common tastes. A historical misconception of a taste map for the tongue, doesn’t really exist. Source

Focus questions:

• How do you taste your food?
• How can we investigate it?

Learning outcomes:

Design an investigation to collect evidence on how we taste food and use that evidence to describe how we sense the different kinds of tastes different kinds of food have.

Exploration

1. Organize learners into groups and pairs.
2. Ask. What kinds of tastes are there? accept all answers (sweet, salty, bitter and sour).
3. Ask. What helps you taste? tongue
4. Review the anatomy of the tongue.
5. Ask. How does the tongue and brain interpret how an unknown food tastes? accept all answers
6. Ask how can we collect evidence on how our tongue determines different tastes.
7. Lead them to doing an experiment and collecting evidence.
8. Decide together on a procedure to place small pieces of the different foods with singular tastes or combined tastes on the tongue to see what flavor they sense. Also where they place it on the tongue, whether they place it one place or move it from place to place.
   • Decide if the food should be known to the taster or not. If not then decide how. Should one student close their eyes and another secretly select an unknown food for them or something else?
   • Maybe use a toothpick, to place a small amount of food on different places of their tongue.
   • Judge the taste with the mouth open before food spreads to other areas of the tongue.
   • Should taste judgment indicate strength or weakness as well as type (bitter, sour, salty, or sweet) or combination of type.
   • Partner rinses mouth with water and continues with same type of food on other areas of tongue.
   • Record taste judgment each time.
   • Repeat procedure with other food types.
   • Trade places and repeat entire procedure.
9. Decide on procedure and write it in their lab notes.
10. Conduct experiment and prepare to display and share results with class.

Invention

1. Regroup as a class and groups demonstrate their projects.
2. Analyze evidence to determine whether some areas of the tongue are more sensitive to taste than other regions.
3. What does your evidence support or refute?
4. Are there places on the tongue more sensitive?
5. Can you taste each type on multiple places?
6. When flavors are combined how are they interpreted?
7. When you discuss your results how often are you using evidence?
8. How often did people refer to their evidence?
9. How important is evidence in understanding our world?

Discover - Summary

Lab notes

1. What have you learned? accept all answers ...
   Hopefully:
   • Evidence is collected through observation.
   • Evidence is used to reason with to organize and understand interactions in our world and communicate about them with others.
   • The better the evidence we use, the better we will understand what is happening and the more accurate our predictions about future events will be.
   • Scientists must collect a great deal of evidence in order to support their explanations.
   • Solid evidence provides credibility.
2. What have you learned about how scientists do science? they use observations to collect evidence to think reason and explain ... to better understand the world ....
3. How important is evidence? it is the basis to understand what is happening in the world an make better predictions about what has happened and may happen in the future.
4. How is evidence collected? observation an investigation of the world and by sometimes intervening to experiment and see what happens.
5. How is it used? to understand and predict ...
6. Does one example make us believe we understand something? it is a start, but repeated evidence adds more credibility to our understanding
7. Is it helpful to anticipate what might happen with an experiment? yes ... It is helpful to organize and try things out, If don't get NO, then use follow up ...
8. Is it sometimes not helpful to anticipate what might happen with an experiment? but sometimes it influences your thinking and may create a bias for a particular outcome and cause you to misinterpret or develop misconceptions
9. When do you enjoy learning? accept all answers
10. When do you enjoy being scientists? accept all answers