Synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society

Possible Questions:

What societal need does concrete fill?

What natural resources are used to create concrete?

Why does concrete have different properties from the natural resources it comes from?

To understand why a material has the properties it does, scientists begin with the atoms that make it up

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Possible Questions:

How do the properties of a baseball affect how far it moves when hit with a certain amount of force?

How are the materials that make up a baseball similar to the gecko-like material described in Section 2 of the reading?

Why do materials scientists care about the atoms that make up materials?

How can there be just 118 elements, and hundreds of thousands of different materials?

Atoms combine with other atoms in a variety of combinations to form all the matter around us. Atoms combine with other atoms to form molecules. The structure of a molecule is directly related to its properties.

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Possible Questions:

How does a water molecule provide evidence that molecules have different properties from the atoms that make them up?

How is the motion of a baseball similar to the motion of atoms? Think about kinetic energy and the motion of atoms in solids, liquids, and gases.

What is the relationship between gravitational energy and chemical energy, which is stored in the bonds holding together atoms and molecules?

How can this dialogue and evidence from the last case study (marbles experiment) by used to explain the relationship between energy and matter?