Classroom Activity One : Types of Heat Transfer
Objective: Students will be able to label different types of heat transfer including radiation, conduction and convection.
General Vocabulary: movement, heat, warm, cold, sun, Earth, water, air, up, down, direct contact, exchange, direction, red, blue, transfer.
Scientific Vocabulary: radiation, conduction, insulator, conductor, convection
Materials Required: Hot plate, beaker, water, plastic spoon, metal spoon, 2 small Erlenmeyer flasks, red food dye, blue food dye, an empty fish tank
A good way to begin this lesson is with a phenomenon that students can observe. One example is to have students touch a metal spoon. And ask does it feel warm or cold? After holding the spoon for 20 seconds, how does it feel now? Which way did the heat move, from your hand to the spoon or from the spoon to your hand? The next phenomena could be a beaker of boiling water. Which way is the heat moving from the hot plate to the beaker or from the beaker to the hot plate? Which way does heat move from something hotter to something colder or the other way?
The next part of the lesson would be direct instruction that reviews the objective as well as review the general and scientific vocabulary with as many clarifying images as possible. Students could take notes or make flashcards that they accumulate throughout the year or use vocabulary worksheets.
After some form of notes students will be broken into 3 or 6 groups depending on how many stations you are able to set up. There are three different stations one for radiation, conduction and convection separately. Stations will be numbered 1, 2, and 3. At each station students will have to identify the type of heat transfer exhibited by the activity.
Station number one will be radiation. One idea for this station could be an image that students need to label and has a picture of a person warming their hands near a fire. Students could also be asked to label the fire and hands to practice their English vocabulary. A second picture could be of the sun sending radiation visualized as waves with a short wavelength and again students could be asked to label the sun and the earth as well as the type of heat transfer depicted.
Station number 2 will be conduction. Here students will have a hot plate with a beaker of water on it. The water should be hot but still comfortable to touch. Students will have a metal and plastic spoon which they will stick into the water at the same time for 10 seconds. After removing the spoons students will observe which spoon feels warmer. Here students could be asked the type of heat transfer that heated the beaker, the water and the spoons? Also, which spoon was a better conductor of the heat and which was a better insulator.
Station 3 will be convection. At this station students could take a small Erlenmeyer flask filled with hot water dyed red with food coloring and very cold blue water from an ice bath and place them in a room temperature tank or a tall clear container. The cold blue water may need to be tipped over for the cold dense blue water to come out of the flask. Red hot water will rise out of the flask when placed on the bottom of the tank. Both flasks should be placed in the tank at roughly the same time. Once in the room temperature water the hot red water will rise and the cold blue water will stay on the bottom of the tank. This will last until the red water cools then sinks and the blue water warms then rises. One question could have students draw and label the colors of the water they saw and where they went in the tank.
A good closing or exit ticket for this lesson could be to provide different examples of radiation, conduction and convection and see if students can identify each. This would require a visual aid such as a video or picture for students to understand what is happening and correctly identify each type of heat transfer.
Classroom Activity Two: Is Carbon Dioxide Able to Trap Heat?
Objective: Students will be able to make observations and record temperature differences between a mixture of gases and pure carbon dioxide.
General Vocabulary: soda bottle, baking soda, water, vinegar, tube, air.
Scientific Vocabulary: Carbon dioxide, reaction, heat, temperature, mixture
Materials Required: 3 clear soda bottles, 2 caps to the soda bottles with holes drilled in them, plastic tubing, water, two thermometers, modeling clay, baking soda, vinegar, scale or balance, permanent marker for labeling bottles, container for water bath, heat lamps.
This lab ambient air (a mixture of gases) is compared to a bottle with pure CO2. Both bottles are placed equal distance from their own heat lamps and the rate at which the gases heat up and cool down are measured. For this experiment follow or modify the following procedure adapted from an activity book published by the National Atmospheric and Atmospheric Administration.45
- Label your clear 2L soda bottles Air (clear bottle no holes), CO2 (clear soda bottle with no holes) and Reaction Chamber (soda bottle with the hole in the side for plastic tubing).
- Put the thermometers and plastic tubing into 3 different caps and make a tight seal using the modeling clay. The thermometer should extend about 1.5 below the cap and the tubing should extend 1 inch below its cap. Now you have 2 caps with thermometers and one with plastic tubing.
- Take the free end of the plastic tubing and make sure it extends into the clear soda bottle with the hole in the side. Then make a tight seal with the modeling clay.
- Place a cap with a thermometer on the soda bottle labeled air. Next put the other cap with the thermometer on the soda bottle labeled CO2.
- Put the cap on enough to keep it attached to the bottle but loose enough so that air can escape if you squeeze the bottle.
- Measure 60 ml of vinegar with your graduated cylinder.
- Mass two tablespoons of baking soda. (do not forget to use the mass of your weighing dish to figure this out)
Mass of baking soda = mass of baking soda AND dish - mass of dish
- Fill your water bath halfway with water.
- Fill the soda bottle labeled CO2 all the way to the top with room temperature water.
- Place the CO2 bottle upside down in the water bath and insert the tube from the reaction chamber.
- Use a funnel to place your massed baking soda into the CO2 bottle.
- The next steps need to be done quickly. Read the instructions first. Pour 60 ml of the vinegar into the reaction chamber and QUICKLY fasten the sealed cap to the bottle. (easiest way to do this is to have on person pour the vinegar while the other person holds the bottle in one hand and the cap in the other)
- Swirl the CO2 bottle once the reaction has slowed. And Add more vinegar once it has stopped. Do not forget to measure and record how much vinegar you used.
- React Baking soda and vinegar until the CO2 bottle is completely filled with carbon dioxide gas.
- Once the CO2 is filled with CO2 remove it from the water and quickly cap it with the cap with the thermometer.
- Cap the air bottle with the cap with a thermometer.
- Take the starting temperature of the bottles Air and CO2 (this is time 0)
- Place the sealed bottles labeled Air and CO2 under a heat lamp so that they receive the same amount of light.
- Record the temperature inside each bottle every min for 15 min.
- Graph your results.
Classroom Activity Three - Sample Ice Cores
Objective: Students will be able to conclude for themselves which factor most affects climate by collecting data and analyzing graphs.
General Vocabulary: matches, years, past, influence, ice, air, bubbles
Scientific Vocabulary: ice core, methane, volcanic ash, dust, carbon dioxide, graph, climate, temperature
Materials Required: 6 petri dishes, 4 different types of beads to represent different atmospheric components, glue, labels
This activity is where students look at replica ice core samples to determine which factor most influences the climate over the last 150,000 years. The options are methane, volcanic ash, dust or carbon dioxide. Looking at petri dishes with glue and different marbles which represent air bubbles or particles of dust or ash students record, graph and interpret their results to see which factor over time best matches the graph of temperature over the last 150,000 years. This activity is from an eesmarts climate change advanced workshop.46
Ice Core Key
Each
Blue bead is equal to 50 ppm of CO2
Clear bead is equal to 50 ppb of Methane
Wooden bead is equal to 50 particles of Dust
Wooden Bead with marker is equal to 50 particles of volcanic ash
150,000 years ago = |
200 ppm of CO2 350 ppb of CH4 200 particles of dust |
= 4 blue beads = 7 clear beads = 4 wooden beads |
135,000 years ago = |
300 ppm of CO2 500 ppb of CH4 170 particles of dust |
= 6 blue beads = 10 clear beads = 3 wooden beads |
100,000 years ago = |
230 ppm of CO2 450 ppb of CH4 150 particles of dust 40 ppm volcanic ash |
= 5 blue beads = 9 clear beads = 2 wooden beads = 1 dotted bead |
50,000 years ago = |
200 ppm of CO2 400 ppb of CH4 450 particles of dust 240 ppm volcanic ash |
= 4 blue beads = 8 clear beads = 9 wooden beads = 5 dotted beads |
20,000 years ago = |
190 ppm of CO2 350 ppb of CH4 180 particles of dust 80 ppm volcanic ash |
= 4 blue beads = 7 clear beads = 4 wooden beads = 2 dotted beads |
10,000 years ago = |
260 ppm of CO2 400 ppb of CH4 40 particles of dust |
= 5 blue beads = 8 clear beads = 1 wooden bead
|
Classroom Activity four - Sources of Carbon Dioxide
Objective: Students will be able to observe and conclude which contributes more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, human breath or car exhaust through a laboratory experiment.
General Vocabulary: breath, car exhaust, balloon, air, straw, cup, twist tie, blue, green, yellow, most, least
Scientific Vocabulary: bromothymol blue, indicator, carbon dioxide,
Materials Required: 4 different colored balloons, twist ties, straws, 4 clear cups, bromothymol blue indicator, car exhaust (not from a hybrid car), bike pump, human breath, baking soda, vinegar, Erlenmeyer flask, water
Which contributes more CO2 to the atmosphere? Human breath or car exhaust? Students will answer this question in this lab by bubbling pure carbon dioxide, human breath, car exhaust and ambient air through bromothymol blue and observing how yellow each solution turns. Students will capture each gas in a balloon then make sure all the balloons are the same size. Gases will be captured in a balloon sealed with a twist tie. The more carbon dioxide present the more yellow the solution will turn. CO2 when mixed with water makes carbonic acid. Bromothymol blue turns yellow in the presence of an acid.47