Zoom In
Engage students in activities that help them identify main components and characterize major interactions between them
During the lesson, students should have opportunities to explore the targeted problem or phenomenon using chemical models at different levels of granularity, from the multiparticle to the electronic levels. That requires characterizing major chemical components and their interactions.
Engage students in the identification of relevant physical, chemical, and biological components in interaction within and across subsystems.
For the identified main components, engage students in the characterization of major physical and chemical interactions between them.
During the "Zoom In" phases of a lesson, students will engage in activities that help them identify the main components in the systems of interest, analyze their properties, and characterize their interactions at levels of granularity that are productive in making sense of the problem or phenomenon under consideration.Â
For example, in the proposed module on greenhouse gases, students identify important atmospheric components, such as O2, N2, CO2, and H2O, and explore properties that affect their interaction with electromagnetic radiation. For this purpose, students are introduced to the concepts of bond polarity and molecular polarity and use an interactive tool to infer the polarity of different chemical entities in the atmosphere. Later in the lesson, the students explore how bond and molecular polarity determine whether molecules absorb infrared radiation, and thus may contribute to global warming.
