Inquiry Science Activities by Vilimaka Foliaki
Activity 1:
What’s causing the Water to rise?
What you need
1. Three identical Petri dishes or saucers or a large flat tray; 2. Three identical glass cups/jars (not glass beakers—you’ll see why); 3. Six small birthday candles; 4. Matches; 5. Labels. What to do 1. Label the first Petri dish A, the second Petri dish, B and the third Petri dish C; 2. Attach: a. one candle to the centre of Petri dish A; b. two candles to the centre of Petri dish B; c. three candles to the centre of Petri dish C; 3. Fill each Petri dish with water to about a centimetre below the rim. 4. Tell the students that they are going to do a science activity with candles and water. 5. Light all six candles and wait until they all burn evenly. 6. Place the three cups at the same time over the candles on the saucer (let a student help you). Questions to facilitate thinking and reflection: 1. Under which cup does the water level rise highest? 2. Why did we use identical dishes, cups and candles? 3. Do we need to pour the same amount of water in the saucers? 4. Which variable is manipulated or changed in comparing A, B and C? 5. Above which dishes did heat develop most? 6. Was the amount of air trapped under the cups the same for all three? 7. Why did the water level rise highest in cup C?
Vilimaka Foliaki, 2010
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Activity 2: Students become independent thinkers; they infer, make choices and decisions In the science classroom, whole-class teacher demonstrations are a resource-efficient way of ensuring that students learn important scientific ideas. The main downside of this strategy, however, is that since students are not actively engaged in the activity, they are more likely not to be learning in a meaningful way as they are just passive listeners. This activity will give you ideas on how to maximize student participation during whole-class teacher demonstrations. This activity aims to teach students about experimentation. What you need 1. Two glass cups/jars of different sizes; 2. One small birthday candle; 3. A piece of ceramic tile or flat glass; 4. Box of matches (or something to light the candle with) What to do 1. You invert a glass jar over a lighted candle. Then you ask the students to observe carefully. 2. When the flame had gone off, you ask the students: “I wonder why that happened? “ [The intention of this probe is to get the students to make some inferences.] 3. Wait for some responses from the students. Discuss some of the responses with the class.
4. You, while holding the larger jar, ask the class: ”If you are right in saying that the flame went out because the air was used up, what would happen then if I placed this jar over the lighted candle?” [The intention of this probe is also to get the students to make some inferences.]
5. Then you ask: “If your inference is correct that the candle went out because the air was used up, a candle will burn longer in a larger jar than in a smaller jar. What do you think”.
6. After a brief discussion of the above probe, you then ask: “How can we set up an experiment to test your inferences”. You should be getting students to start thinking about designing of experiments. 7. You listen to the students’ descriptions of how they would take jars of various sizes and measure the burning time of a candle that is placed under them. 8. Ask them to list what they are supposed to do in a series of steps. [This encourages independent thinking]
9. Then you ask them: How are we going to record our results? Discussion. [This, again, encourages independent thinking. With tactful guidance from you, the teacher, students will come up with creative ways of presenting their results] 10. Call on each group to a come up with the format of the table they would use to record their data.
Vilimaka Foliaki, 2010
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Activity 3: Demystifying the Mole‌using peas (or coconuts)!
What to do:
1. Ask your students: What do we need the mole for. Why do we need the mole? Discuss their responses as a whole-class. 2. Introduce Avogadro: Whole-class discussion of his insights. 3. Define the mole. 4. Analogies used to help students comprehend the mole concept. Use a dozen eggs! 5. Question for students to discuss: How much space a mole of coconuts would occupy? 6. Read to them the Green Pea Analogy and whole-class discussion of analogy. 7. Apply learnt ideas: Weigh 1 mole of some common substance (e.g. coconuts, sand, sugar, aluminium cans, etc). Ensure that students get an idea how much a mole really is!
Vilimaka Foliaki, 2010
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The Green PeaAnalogy (You can use Coconuts instead of Peas!) If you selected a hundred (102) average-sized peas, you would find that they occupy roughly a volume of 20 cm3. A million (106) peas are just enough to fill an ordinary household refrigerator and a billion (109) peas will fill a three bedroom house from cellar to attic. A trillion (1012) peas will fill a thousand houses, the number you might find in a medium-sized town. A quadrillion (1015) peas will fill all the buildings in one of our larger cities such as Ottawa or Calgary. Obviously you will run out of buildings very soon. Let us try a larger measure, for instance the province of Alberta. Supposethat there is a blizzard over Alberta, but instead of snowing snow, it snows peas. Alberta is covered with a blanket of peas about one metre deep all the way from Saskatchewan out to British Columbia, and all the way from the United States to the Northwest Territories. This blanket of peas drifts over the roads and banks up against the sides of the houses, and covers all the fields and forests. Think of flying across the province with the blanket of peas extending out as far as you can see. This gives you and idea of our next number. There will be in this blanket about a quintillion (1018) peas. Imagine that this blizzard of peas falls over the entire land- North America, Africa, South America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. All of the continents are covered with peas one metre deep. This global blanket will contain sextillion (1021) peas. Then imagine that the oceans are frozen over and the blanket of peas covers the entire land and sea area of Earth. Go out among the neighbouring stars and collect 250 planets the size of Earth and cover each of these with a blanket of peas one metre deep. Then you have a mole of peas. Furthermore, go out into the farthest reaches of the Milky Way, and collect 250,000planets, each the size of Earth. Cover each one with a blanket of peas one metre deep. You now have cotillion (1027) - a number corresponding to the number of atoms in your body
Vilimaka Foliaki, 2010
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