Teaching activities

Promote reflection on and clarification of existing ideas

The following activities are intended to get students identifying and then refining their
ideas about physical and chemical change. It is important for students to observe a
number of changes and to record their opinions on what is happening. They could
record this in a booklet where they write about and draw results and observations. They
should be encouraged to formulate and record hypotheses about what is happening
with the knowledge that their opinions will not be assessed at this stage.

For an example of this technique see: Using logbooks in year 10 electricity.

This can help bring out their existing ideas and help them challenge and extend their
existing beliefs.

Students could investigate:

 Heating steel wool in air and collecting the black powder that results, then weighing the reactant
and product (there should be an increase). This could be done as a POE (Predict-Observe-Explain):
students are asked to predict what will happen to the weight of the steel wool when it burns. What has
been added to the steel wool during combustion?
 Dissolving sugar and salt in water and comparing what happens to the electrical conductivity of
the two solutions as the dissolving takes place. Recovering the salt by evaporation shows the salt is still
there but the conductivity is indicating something new is forming.
 Comparing boiling water with mixing vinegar and baking soda - both produce bubbles but what's
the difference? The baking soda and vinegar can be mixed in a Ziploc sandwich bag to show the
production of a new substance which blows the bag up.
 Precipitation reactions, particularly ones that produce an obvious colour change, such as Epsom
salts and ammonia solution. This can be compared with adding potassium permanganate to water. What
are the differences?
 Acid - base reactions can be illustrated through the use of indicators both natural (cabbage juice)
and synthetic. The colour changes help illustrate that new materials could be forming.
Practise using and build the perceived usefulness of a scientific model or idea
It is important that examples of changes are not confined to only the materials and
chemicals students are exposed to in the classroom. As a homework activity students
could be asked to collect examples of changes they see around them and classify these
on their scale of physical and chemical changes. Some examples they may collect are
combustion of fuels, cooking and processes such as digestion, respiration and
photosynthesis.

Clarify and consolidate ideas for/by communication to and with others

To consolidate their views students in groups could be asked to choose two changes,
one which is on the physical end of the continuum and one on the chemical end and
explain to the class what the differences are. Communicating their ideas to others can
help students clarify and consolidate new and existing ideas about changes.