Reassembled Lesson Plans (Water Resistance)

This post shows my final gamified lesson plan. The plan is based on water resistance.

Session E: Water Resistance

Program of study:       Identify the effects of air resistance, water resistance and friction, that act between moving surfaces

Working Scientifically: Take measurements, Record data and results, Report findings from

enquiries (both oral and written), use test results to make predictions to set up further comparative and fair tests.

Resources needed:     3 jars/beakers, water, oil, syrup, marble, plasticine, bowl, clear measuring cylinder, fruit net, force meter, various small objects that sink, sticky tape, scissors, scrap A4 paper, 3 50g masses, balsa wood, tin foil, wooden dowels, other boat making materials, stopwatches. Access to internet

Whole class teaching: 

Open to the class reading the following to the class:

It has been two months since the museum incident with the class and Mrs Pennington and to make up for the upset caused by this, the museum owners have paid for an all expenses trip to see the Amazon Rainforest in in Brazil. No more than two days passed before you and your class find themselves lost in the jungle being chased by angry indigenous hunters! Somehow you have all managed to get a little way ahead of the hunters but now find yourselves on the edge of a waste deep swamp. You can see several different paths to the other side, all of them involve wading waste deep through different areas of water and mud. How do you decide which path will let you cross the fastest and let you escape the hunters?

Speak to the learners and get their ideas on factors that could slow them down when moving through a liquid such as water or swamp that wouldn't normally matter when running on solid ground. If a learner mentions water resistance, then focus and drill down on the subject. If not, then work water resistance into the discussion. After this move on to explain/discuss that different liquids can have different levels of resistance. Demonstrate this taking several sealed jars with different liquids and a penny in, letting the pennies all rest on the bottom and then turning the jars over to watch the penny fall. Ask students what they notice. Explain that because each liquid has a different level of resistance, the pennies fall at different rates. Ask students to think of a way, in the jungle, they could test to see which liquid would be easiest to move through with the least amount of resistance.

Explain that if they took rocks from the ground and dropped them in the liquids they can see that the fastest sinking rock would be the liquid with the least resistance. Demonstrate this by dropping a stone in each of two containers, one containing water and the other something thicker such as honey or syrup. Ask a learner to assist by dropping one of the stones and use your spare hand to drop a third stone onto the table through the air. Re-emphasise how the first stone to hit the ground experienced only minimal wind resistance until it hit the table, how the water rock has up thrust working against gravity causing it to fall slower, and that the syrup rock took the longest as syrup had more up thrust and more resistance than the water. After this proceed to read the following:

The class quickly grab as many rocks and stones as they can carry and start dropping them in the different areas. Some sank straight to the bottom, others hit the surface and sank much slower. These areas should be avoided as walking through them will be much harder and will slow you down. The class quickly find the fastest rout through the swampland and make it to the other side. They can no longer hear the shouts of hunters, they must have given up when they got to the swamp and turned back. You all breathe a sigh of relief. Mrs Pennington suddenly speaks up, “Class I can hear running water, I remember on the map that the camp beside a river, we should all head towards the sound and see what we find.” After several minuets walk you all come across a large river and amazingly, across on the other side you can see your camp! There is only one problem, there is no bridge across. You will all need to build a raft to cross. Using what you now know about water and air resistance, in teams you must construct a boat or raft that will both float, and travel fast through the water.

Ask the learners to form groups of their own choosing to foster autonomy and then give them 20 minutes (scale to fit the lesson time remaining) to build a boat using the materials provided (paper, plasticine, tin foil, tape etc.) Explain the rules of the challenge, the boat MUST float and will be pushed by the teacher at the same force each time. The winners will be the boat the travels the farthest OR in the event that more than one team reaches the other side, the boat that reaches the other side the quickest. Remind learners about how the spinners changed depending on where weight was applied and also encourage learners to think about how the shape of the boat can change how much resistance the boat experiences in the water.

After the time is up, take each teams boat in turn and push each across the tank taking care to push each boat with the same force. Have a student time each attempt with a stop watch to find out how long it takes the boats to reach the other side (if at all) and record this time down on a visible table (white board etc.) If a boat does not make it to the other side, measure its distance travelled and record that instead. If any boats sink (and time permits) allow those teams to go away for a short time to work on their boat and try again. Once all the results have been taken, award the winning team members points and award badges to any team members whose boat made it to the other side, badges for the achievement. Remember to give plenty of feedback to diagnose why boats either failed or succeeded. After this read the next paragraph:

Congratulations, all of the students in boats they reached the other side made is safely back to camp. Any students in boats that failed to reach the other side luckily were picked up farther down the river by search parties and brought back to camp. The whole class managed to get over their ordeal and enjoyed the rest of their holiday in piece.

Adult-led activity:

Place a number of different objects (that don’t float) one at a time into the fruit net and measure their weight using a force meter. Repeat the measurements this time while the net is suspended in water. Record each measurement in a table repeating if necessary to find an average/mean result. What do the results show? – Gravity still works under water, even though the weightseems different – water resistance is greater than air resistance. Remember the mass stays the same!

Additional Lesson Materials

The Dead Sea

Deep in the Jordan Valley, Israel/Jordan, is the Dead Sea, one of the most spectacular natural landscapes in the whole world. It is the lowest body of water on Earth, the lowest point on Earth and the world's richest source of natural salts.
It is normally as calm as glass, with barely a ripple disturbing its surface. During most days the water shimmers under a beating sun. Where rocks meet its lapping edges, they become snow-like, covered with a thick, gleaming white deposit that gives the area a strange moon like appearance. 
The Dead Sea has no life due to an extremely high content of salts and minerals which is how it got its name! Its rumoured powers of curing many illnesses and its buoyancy have been recognized since the days of Herod the Great, more than 2000 years ago. 
The salt content is four times that of most of the World’s oceans; you can float in the Dead Sea without even trying, which makes swimming interesting! It is the only place in the world where you can sit back on the water to read a newspaper. 

Today the salts and minerals are used to create health products which are sold around the world.