02.08.2021 and 02.12.2021
Experiment Leads: Elizabeth Shih and Hongrong Zhang
On February 8th and 12th, 2021, Science For All hosted a virtual outreach lesson with 6th and 7th graders in Miss Siasoco and Mr. Winter’s classes at Marcy Open School. The lesson covered concepts in physics, primarily forces, and did a home experiment investigating buoyancy of dry erase marker ink in water. The goal of the lesson was to encourage students to be aware of and be able to identify forces in the world, such as gravity, tension, applied loading, and static charges, and how they are applied in science and technology.
In the presented lesson, the team leaders briefly reviewed the previous outreach on miscibility and how density influences how certain objects float and sink. The students were introduced to the term ‘buoyancy,’ which led to the topic of what forces are. Different forces were discussed and how they interact with each other to achieve force balances and hold systems together. The leaders went over the subject of physics, how physics is applied in electricity, mechanics, astronomy, and much more, and introduced some famous physicists. Afterwards, the students moved into breakout rooms to do a home experiment led by their SFA mentors.
The dancing stickman experiment was conducted by both the SFA mentors and students in small groups to illustrate the principle of buoyancy and immiscibility. Students were provided with a large petri dish and Expo dry erase markers in various colors. First, students and mentors were instructed to draw a stickman figure on the petri dish using the markers provided. The figures were allowed to dry before slowly pouring a glass of water, either lukewarm or cold, into the petri dish and observe the water slowly lifting up the inks. Students were encouraged to ask questions during the experiment and to try different shapes, pouring techniques, and water temperature. During the experiment, mentors were instructed to ask students what they thought would happen and what were their reasonings.
After the experiment, students were asked to identify what forces were at play in their dancing man petri dish. Many students correctly identified gravity, applied force, and buoyancy, and some went further to discuss the effects of tensile forces in the floating ink. Students also exercised scientific inquiry by testing different variables and hypothesizing with their classmates on how the variables influenced the results. Afterward, the students worked on the same quizzes that they had completed prior to the lesson to evaluate their mastery of the material. In all questions, there was a marked increase in the accuracy of the answers, suggesting that the outreach was successful.