The Tech Savvy Teacher

Activity: Temperature of water

Standard: 3, Objective 2a
Observe and measure characteristics of water as a solid and liquid.

In the olden days, you pulled out your twenty pound microscope, gathered some slides and swabbed some specimens on them, then watched as your students all tried to gather around to take a peek through the lens. Today there are such things as digital microscopes which can be projected on a computer screen for all to see, and can even capture video. Other savvy options include computer programs to record the eclipses of the moon. With all of the many technological options for school teachers today to put a little "oomph" in lesson plans, we decided to take a test drive on the wide open road of advancements for the classroom and put one of these new inventions to the test.

To teach the characteristics of water we began by putting ice water in a pot and watching as the temperature increased, heating it to the evaporation point, and then collecting the evaporating water with a glass plate, allowing it to condense to form water. During this process we recorded our data with the digital thermometer and tracked the increase in temperature, noting the change in the state of the water from solid to liquid, making observations along the way, hypothesizing about the changes that might take place.


To the left is a fuzzy picture of ice water. It is important to get the water as a solid to start this process. Ask the students to hypohesize what will happen when the water is heated up. What will happen to the temperature?


Step two. Connect digital thermometer to computer and measure water temperature.

Step Three. Apply heat to the ice water making sure to chart the temperature increase of the water. Rationalize with the students if, and why their hypothesis in step one was or was not correct. Discuss the changing state of water and teach how the molecules move faster with heat and thus flow more freely.




Step four. Watch as the digital thermometer charts the temperature of the water. It should start to boil around 100 degrees. If the altitude is high this could be slightly lower as in our example it was about 95 degrees.





Be careful to take the necessary safety precautions.





After you have demonstrated how water turns into steam, then you can show the condensation process by:

Putting a lid over the pot and watching as the water formed begins to drip everywhere. Finally you can analize your data collected on the computer. Wasn't that fun?