Materials:

• test materials

  • felt

  • foam

  • cotton balls

  • paper

  • shiny Mylar

  • aluminum foil

• Monopoly money

• oven

  • plastic storage bin (black or paint black)

  • aluminum foil

  • 3 150W shop lights

• penguin ice cube trays

• scale (to weigh ice cubes before and after)

 

Set-up:

Lay out materials, hand out money to students, position lights over oven. Keep ice cubes in cooler until ready to test dwellings.

 

Goals:

• Understand how to design an experiment

• Learn to test a model, revise, and test again

• Practice interpreting results

• Apply knowledge of heat transfer to a cohesive project

 

Activity:

-Think about budgeting

• We only have $xx.  What types of materials do we want to buy?

• Think about buying materials that have a variety of properties.

  • Ex. Don’t buy 4 things that all reflect (or absorb) heat.

• Try not to buy everything at once... allow money for revision

 

-Come up with a plan

• As a group, decide which materials you want to try.

• Communicate your ideas.

• Decide what the structure of your experiment is going to be

  • Ex. Will you test materials first? Will you build and then test? How will you make revisions?

 

-Start your experiment

• Test your materials and build your first dwelling

• Work together to create a model (make sure there is room for a penguin!)

 

-Test in the oven

• Weigh the an ice cube when the dwelling is ready and record this weight

• Put the penguin in the dwelling and set it in the oven for 15 minutes.

  • Does this time need to be exact? (it should be exactly the same for all dwellings)

• How will we know if our dwelling stopped heat transfer?

  • Weigh before and after

  • Compare with other groups

  • Should we use a control? How would this work? (test a penguin with no dwelling)

 

-Record and interpret results

• Weigh a small cup to put ice cubes in

• Put each ice cube immediately in a cup

  • Why do we do this?

  • If the ice cube melts more before we weigh it, will it weigh less? (No. All of the water will still be in the cup)

• Calculate the amount of melting that occured

  • [Weight of ice in cup] - [Weight of cup] = [Weight of penguin]

  • [Weight of penguin before] - [Weight of penguin after] = [Weight melted]

  • [Weight melted] / [Weight of penguin before] x 100 = [Percent melted]

• Compare this amount with other groups and compare to control

 

-Make revisions

• How can we use our results to make changes?

• Did some groups have better dwellings than others?

• What materials/structures di the other groups use to protect against heat transfer?

• Test out a new model in the oven!

 

-Discuss the experiment

• What did we learn about the dwellings?

• What information did you use to make decisions? (background info, previous tests, observations of other models)

• What other tests or experiments could we have done with this material?

• What other questions do you have that could be explored?