Lesson Summary

Students will design and construct a container that will keep items cool when placed in boiling water. A pat of butter will be placed in the container. The goal is to keep the temperature inside the container as cool as possible and prevent the butter from melting.

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Essential Question

How can the scientific method be used to come up with a solution to the problem of protecting an item exposed to a high temperature?

Concepts

The scientific method can be used to find solutions to many problems.

There can be more than one solution to a problem.

Food, equipment and tools need to be kept at certain temperatures in order to maximize their effectiveness and maintain their structural integrity.

MESSENGER Mission Conncection

The MESSENGER mission designers have come up with various ways to keep the temperatures on the spacecraft tolerable in the hot Mercurian environment.

Standards & Benchmarks

NATIONAL SCIENCE EDUCATION STANDARDS

Standard A2: Understandings about scientific inquiry

• Scientists usually inquire about how physical, living, or designed systems function. Conceptual principles and knowledge guide scientific inquiries. Historical and current scientific knowledge influence the design and interpretation of investigations and the evaluation of proposed explanations made by other scientists.

Standard E1: Abilities of technological design

• Identify a problem or design an opportunity: Students should be able to identify new problems or needs and to change and improve current technological designs.
• Propose designs and choose between alternative solutions: Students should demonstrate thoughtful planning for a piece of technology or technique. Students should be introduced to the roles of models and simulations in these processes.
• Implement a proposed solution: A variety of skills can be needed in proposing a solution depending on the type of technology that is involved. The construction of artifacts can require the skills of cutting, shaping, treating, and joining common materials—such as wood, metal, plastics, and textiles. Solutions can also be implemented using computer software.

BENCHMARKS FOR SCIENTIFIC LITERACY (AAAS PROJECT 2061)

Benchmark 1B2

• Hypotheses are widely used in science for choosing what data to pay attention to and what additional data to seek, and for guiding the interpretation of data (both new and previously available.)

Benchmark 1B4

• There are different traditions in science about what is investigated and how, but they all have in common certain basic beliefs about the value of evidence, logic, and good arguments. And there is agreement that progress in all fields of science depends on intelligence, hard work, imagination, and even chance.

Benchmark 12A1

• Know why curiosity, honesty, openness, and skepticism are so highly regarded in science and how they are incorporated into the way science is carried out; exhibit those traits in their own lives and value them in others.

Benchmark 12A2

• View science and technology thoughtfully, being neither categorically antagonistic nor uncritically positive.

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