Creating New Activities

What do your students already know that they should be able to apply?

We were now nearing the end of 3rd term and started discussing tides. I thought this would be a great time to review moon phases and gravity, since we did those 1st term. I wanted them to figure out why the tides are not the same height everyday by analyzing some data and thinking about things we have already learned.

I do this as sort of a jigsaw (4 students in a group, each student graphs a different week, they put them together and analyze what they have). It is a great review of where the moon is in different phases and how gravity is greater when more mass is on that side of an object.

Any tide data from any location will work. Long Beach was just someplace my students know. Using current data is also helpful. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tide_predictions.html

What supplies or equipment will I need to have students do this activity?

Okay, Radioactive Decay activities are not a new idea. The ones I've seen all involve things like dice or M&Ms. These activities don't help students understand that radioactive decay means that the atoms actually change. The outcomes also are very predictable without doing the activity.

Popcorn actually changes and can not be changed back giving that extra dimension. It also isn't as obvious as to what is happening until you plot your data. Large sample sizes work best so I combine all class's data into one set.

This did require me to find microwaves to use in class and to make sure I bought popcorn. This year I went out and bought air poppers (about 20$ each) to use instead. They worked faster than the microwaves (which ment I had to adjust my own assignment to shorter time intervals) and we could count the kernels before and after.

How much instruction needs to be given for this activity?

I got this great idea to use Cartesian Divers when discussing pressure. I wanted to also have them relate pressure to density (Gas compresses under pressure, gas increases in density, diver sinks because density is now greater than water). I wanted them to observe this in different ways to get them to figure out what is happening and put the pieces together themselves.

There were multiple steps and students couldn't remember them all when I just explained them. I needed to make sure that the instructions were detailed and step by step.