Pennies!Let's hear all those labs, lessons, and activities you have that use pennies! Post your ideas as comments... look for a couple of my favorites to show up shortly.
We'll keep this object open for 3 weeks... I hope to shorten the time frame, but want to give people a chance to pass the word around and get as many people posting as possible.
12 comments:
Water Drops
I give each student a penny, an eye dropper/pipette, a paper towel, and a cup of water. Students use pipettes/eye droppers to place drops of water on a penny. The water clumps together and with a bit of patience, you can end up with quite a "bubble" of water on your penny.
That's it. But there's so much to do with such a simple activity. Students can conduct simple experiments - which side of the penny can hold more water? Students can practice collecting data and making graphs. You can talk about adhesion/cohesion/surface tension/hydrogen bonds with older kids. (I'll often start the lesson by asking them to describe water, and I'll add "sticky" to the list. They think I'm crazy, but by the end they get it).
You can follow up by giving them a cup of soapy water and having them repeat the activity.
Foil Boats
You'll need:
*Several large pans of water for the class (dish pans work well)
*A large quantity of pennies
* 6" x 6" pieces of aluminum foil
Have students fashion one square of foil into a boat that can hold as many pennies as possible. Stress that it doesn't have to be 'boat - shaped' (though many students will want theirs to be). After building is complete have students place their boat on the water and start adding pennies. They should keep track of how many pennies their boat can hold. After the initial testing, provide students with a second piece of foil and challenge them to improve on their design. Most of them will improve - drastically!
Be warned, you'll have students who want to have a third and fourth shot at making the best boat - decide ahead of time what your plan is.
Also, I have the students keep records... they sketch the boat design and record how many pennies each design held.
Follow up with a discussion... surface area, density, bouyancy, how do ships float, etc.
I use pennies as a way to introduce chemical changes. Place a paper towel in a pie tin and wet it vinegar.Place a few shiny new pennies on the towel and wait a day and the pennies turn green. (To clean the pennies add some lemon juice and you have shiny pennies again.)
Fill a cup all the way with water (to the brim). Start adding pennies to the already full cup and see how many you can fit in before water spills out.
Similar effect to that achieved with the water drops on pennies.
PS You'll need a lot of pennies in order to have multiple groups of students doing this at the same time.
Refraction
Place an opaque cup (a white cup works best)on the table in front of you. Place a penny on the bottom of the cup. At this point, you should be able to see the penny in the bottom of the cup. Slide the cup away from you until you can no longer see the penny. Slowly pour water into the cup (or have someone do it for you) - go carefully, you don't want to move the penny. As the water level rises, the penny will reappear to you.
The reappearance of the penny is a result of the refraction due to the water.
Gravity and Projectile Motion
You'll need to work at the edge of a desk. Place a ruler on the desk so that about an inch hangs off the edge. Place one penny on top of the ruler and one penny next to the ruler. You will then quickly flick the ruler, so that you set both pennies in motion at the same time - the first penny falls straight to the ground because the ruler is no longer holding it up and the second penny begins a parabolic path to the ground because the ruler pushes it. Have students watch and listen to determine which penny hits the ground first (you will probably want to collect hypotheses first).
Both pennies should hit the floor at the same time, because gravity causes them to fall at the same rate (even though one penny took a longer path). You'll have kids who don't believe it - be ready to perform multiple times or even let them try it.
This is one you'll want to try a couple of times before you have students in front of you, but it really is easy.
I first learned of this activity in the Holt, Reinhart, & Winston Physical Science textbook.
Mass, Density, and Pennies
In 1982 the composition of the penny changed from 95% copper (5% zinc) to 97.5% zinc (2.5% copper).
You can have students find the mass of pennies from different years - individual years, by decade, before and after 1982, etc. If they measure carefully, they should see a difference.
If you're working with density, have students calculate the density of pennies before and after 1982.
Several different versions of this activity are available. One can be found at http://www.middleschoolscience.com/cents.htm
Pennies for Observation Activities
I use pennies for one of a series of activities at the beginning of the school year when we discuss obsersvations (what they are, how to make them and how important good ones are)
Every student gets a pile of pennies- no definite amount.
Students work in pairs. They each go in turn. The object is to be the last person to make a move. There are two legal moves and I write these on the board:
1. You may take any amount of pennies from one pile or
2 You may take the same amount of pennies from both piles.
The last one to make a move is the winner!!
Try it and have fun!! It is also fun to watch the class and see how long it takes for them to catch on and who catches on quickly!!!
I use pennies as weights in film cannisters in a sink, float, or suspend activity. That I saw on sciencespot.net called Dunkin' for Density.
Basically what I have students do is predict how many pennies it will take to cause a film cannister to sink, float or suspend in a bowl of water. Then they try it and determine the density of the cannister with the pennies still in it. This leads them to a better understanding of density.
After a discussion on the construction of eagle nests, I challenge my students to build a nest out of paper strips, toothpicks, thread, and pipe cleaners that will hold pennies. Teams are provided with $1.00 (or a Bird Buck) to buy nest-building materials from the Nest Store. After they are done building, we place the nests on "branches" and determine the best nest or the one that holds the most pennies. The first download includes a project description, score sheets, Bird Bucks, a Nest Store sign, and a teacher information page with links to websites with related activities and background information. The second download contains two student worksheets - one for planning and another for evaluating their work. Project Files - http://sciencespot.net/Media/eaglenestchall.pdf and http://sciencespot.net/Media/eaglenestchall2.pdf .This project is one of several that I use to address our state's technological design standards.
For a simple "that's cool" activity I have students put ketchup on a penny and leave it alone until the end of class. When they wipe away the ketchup, the penny is shiny again. I collect extra ketchup packets and use them for the activity.
In addition to this I leave it out as a center......especially around presidents day........Mechele in Texas Anonymous said...
I use pennies as a way to introduce chemical changes. Place a paper towel in a pie tin and wet it vinegar.Place a few shiny new pennies on the towel and wait a day and the pennies turn green. (To clean the pennies add some lemon juice and you have shiny pennies again.)
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