360Storylines—Batteries, 1-Year Access

Product Details

A 360Storyline is a collection of experiments that together let students engage in science in an authentic manner through the use of relevant phenomena. Each experiment in a 360Storyline builds on things learned in the preceding experiments until students develop a final, working explanation or model of the phenomenon. Every lab in any 360Storyline is completely editable and supported by videos and simulations. 

Includes:

• Access to digital content for 1 year
• Lab supplies for each experiment for a single class of 30 students

Batteries
Lead students to a written understanding/working model of batteries. As part of this storyline, students build their very own batteries from a few simple, inexpensive materials. In doing so, they gain an intimate understanding of the scientific principles, such as redox reactions, that make a battery work. Moreover, students come to understand that a voltaic cell is a battery so it must contain an anode, a cathode and a medium through which charge can travel (i.e., a salt bridge). Students will leave this storyline with the ability to examine technologies, such as electric cars, in the natural world and formulate perspectives on the long-term viability of those technologies.

What Students Do

Lab 1—Explore Iron Corrosion
Students explore how iron corrosion occurs and how this concept is related to oxidation states of atoms. Students learn that corrosion of iron, better known as rusting, is a process that transfers electrons and destroys iron objects left out in moist air. The corrosion of several iron nails will be subjected to conditions in an indicator agar mixture that promote or prevent the corrosion of iron.

Lab 2—Metal Activity
Using well plates and small quantities of metal ion solutions and metal samples, students carry out a series of possible single replacement reactions of metals with solutions of metal cations in order to determine the activity series of the metals.

Lab 3—Build a Micro Battery
Students build a micro battery from a few simple materials: an LED, two filter papers and two small pieces of metal. Students explore this small voltaic cell and learn that a voltaic cell is a device that converts chemical potential energy to electrical energy by a thermodynamically favored reaction.

Lab 4—Battery Challenge
Students use reaction well plates, small quantities of metals and metal cation solutions, filter papers and voltmeters to build various voltaic cells (batteries) with different voltage outputs. They are challenged to find the best materials to build a battery with the highest voltage output. Students design, build and refine their batteries and then compare their voltages with the class.

Students must drive the learning forward by developing procedures and asking questions. Each storyline is supported by editable documents that force students to think about how the data they collect relate to an individual experiment’s investigative phenomenon and how the data they collect in a series of labs relate to a broader, anchoring phenomenon. Each storyline provides access to one year of digital content and hands-on materials for each lab.