360Storylines—Wind, 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

Wind
Lead students to a written understanding/working model of wind. The gases in Earth’s atmosphere contain enormous amounts of energy that are transferable by wind. In order to understand how winds form and why they exhibit certain behaviors, we have to first understand gases. In this series of laboratory activities, students explore the foundational aspects of gases, including the variables used to describe them and their interrelationships. Students see how these variables impact the way gases, or winds, move. As part of this storyline, students complete an engineering design challenge that demonstrates practical applications of gases and how the pressure a gas exerts is particularly important in the beverage industry.

What Students Do

Lab 1—Compressibility
Students discover that gas particles held in a container are very far from each other in constant random motion and can be compressed into smaller volumes whereas the particles in liquids and solids are much closer together and therefore cannot be compressed into smaller volumes to any significant degree.

Lab 2—Relationships Between Gas Variables
Students explore the relationships between the variables that describe a gas: pressure, volume, temperature and quantity. In particular, students examine how changing one variable impacts one or more of the other variables.

Lab 3—The Ideal Gas Law
Students learn that the ideal gas law can be manipulated to understand the relationships between any of the gas variables. Specifically, students observe the effects of changing the number of gas particles on the other variables in the ideal gas law.

Lab 4—What’s in a Container?
This is an engineering design challenge that asks students to design a conceptual beverage can from aluminum. They must consider factors, such as the ability to maintain structural integrity under an applied force and the ability to resist reactions with the contents. This is a fascinating examination of how the pressure gas molecules exert can be used to design solutions to common problems.

Lab 5—Gas Diffusion
In the culmination of this storyline, students come to understand that gas particles make up winds and why winds move in observable patterns.

About 360Storylines

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. 

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.