Melting Ice Investigation

An article by Megan Veldhuizen    2 Comments

Every year I allow my students to explore melting of ice. We conduct an investigation where students study how quickly a cube of ice will melt in their bare hands versus a hand with a glove on it.

Materials:

• Ice cubes
• mittens/gloves
• data sheet (I made mine, you can find it here: www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Melting-Ice-Experiment-Data-Sheet-1700635 )
• Optional: Timers for each student

To begin the exploration students are given the handout so they can make predictions about what they think will happen.

Then, each student gets one mitten/glove. Each student only needs one glove so that cuts down on the cost.

Each students gets two pieces of ice. It is very important that each piece of ice stay separate in each hand so we can make observations about how quickly each one melts.

The ice in their bare hands start melting away quickly, while the ice in the glove melts less quickly. Students can record how much longer it takes for the ice in the glove to melt over the ice in the bare hand

After all the ice is melted and data recorded we then begin working on explanations for why there was a difference in how fast the ice melted in each hand.   Here is an example of one students’ completed data sheet.

We can see that the student explanation is simple, it is because “one has a mitten”. This is not an uncommon answer, but with the goals of the new Oklahoma Academic Standards for Science, we want to try to push students a little further by asking them to explain why the mitten caused the difference.

For example, the ice melted more quickly in the bare hand because it was hotter than than the hand with the glove on. This may be in complete opposition to what some students may think, as they may think that the hand with the glove would be hotter, after all we put gloves on to keep warm. A classroom discussion of this whereby students get a chance to argue from their observable evidence (the ice melted more quickly in the bare hand), the class can get to a claim that the bare hand produced more heat than the hand with the glove.

You may be asking,  “Which specific standard or performance expectation does this task align with?” One aspect of the new standards is that each standard or performance expectation is an end goal or what we develop our classroom assessments around. What it takes to support students in meeting that end goal is sometimes a series of instruction. If we look at one of the performance expectations/standards for 2nd grade (see below), we can see the first bullet under the middle green column reads, “Different kinds of matter exist and many of them can be either solid or liquid, depending on temperature.”
This particular activity helps students examine this concept and begin to gain experiences that help them understand this concept,  while carrying out an investigation, which is part of the Science and Engineering Practice embedded in the end goal or Performance Expectation, “Plan and conduct an investigation to describe and classify different kinds of materials by their observable properties.” However, this activity does encompass all three bullets/concepts under the middle green column so as a classroom teacher, I would have to expose students to additional learning experiences to gain the remaining two concepts before I should expect my students to be proficient with the Performance Expectation.

2-PS1-1 is not the only Performance Expectation at 2nd grade this activity supports, it also supports 2-PS1-4. See the tags in the image below for details.

 As always safety is a top priority when having our students conduct investigations. This lesson uses ice on the students bare hands. When handing out the ice cubes to your students be mindful of the size. We want students to understand the concept behind the ice melting, but we do not want their bare hands to get extremely cold.

Here are a few more picture of the investigation in my classroom:

Please leave a comment below letting me know how the investigation goes in your class or any questions you might have or share ideas for how you would help students gain some of the remaining Disciplinary Core Ideas concepts associated with PS2-1!

Did you enjoy this article? Share it!

Related Posts

• Generating Phenomena Ideas
• Thinking with Crosscutting Concepts
• Announcing Applications for Class 2 OKMath and OKSci Leadership
• The Oklahoma Science Framework Project: Draft Overviews Released

About the Author: Megan Veldhuizen

I am the K-5 STEM Specialist/Grant Facilitator for Lawton Public Schools. I have previously taught Kindergarten and Transitional First Grade. I have a passion for science! I almost had my Chemistry degree completed when I switched to Early Childhood Education; so I instill the love of science and scientific thinking into my young learners!