Does soap float?
http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/lessons.cfm?DocID=285
A lesson plan for Grades 5–6 Science
About this resource
- Appropriate grades
- 5–6
- Subjects
- science (general), thinking skills (higher order thinking, information literacy, research skills)
- Provider
- American Association for the Advancement of Science
Legal
This catalog record is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. This license applies to the content of this page only and does not apply to the referenced website.
In this lesson, students develop a hypothesis and investigate whether soap floats. The focus of this lesson is scientific inquiry, but it also challenges students to consider flotation and sinking. After encouraging students to predict which brands of soap will float, the teacher places four different types of soap in water, and students evaluate their predictions. Then, students read about the background of Ivory soap and determine how it is different from the others. Students also hypothesize about how they can make other brands of soap float. Finally, students microwave the bars of soap and test their hypotheses again. Science NetLinks provides student handouts, directions for completing the activity, and a complete list of all items necessary. This lesson also contains links to the Ivory soap homepage, “Ask a Scientist: Density and Floating,” “MadSci Network: Chemistry,” and other sites that have rubric-making tools for assessment.
North Carolina Curriculum Alignment
Science (2005)
Grade 5
- Goal 4: The learner will conduct investigations and use appropriate technologies to build an understanding of forces and motion in technological designs.
- Objective 4.06: Build and use a model to solve a mechanical design problem.
- Devise a test for the model.
- Evaluate the results of test.
- Objective 4.07: Determine how people use simple machines to solve problems.
- Objective 4.06: Build and use a model to solve a mechanical design problem.
Grade 6
- Goal 1: The learner will design and conduct investigations to demonstrate an understanding of scientific inquiry.
- Objective 1.01: Identify and create questions and hypotheses that can be answered through scientific investigations.
- Objective 1.05: Analyze evidence to:
- Explain observations.
- Make inferences and predictions.
- Develop the relationship between evidence and explanation.
- Objective 1.08: Use oral and written language to:
- Communicate findings.
- Defend conclusions of scientific investigations.
- Objective 1.09: Use technologies and information systems to:
- Research.
- Gather and analyze data
- Visualize data.
- Disseminate findings to others.
- Objective 1.10: Analyze and evaluate information from a scientifically literate viewpoint by reading, hearing, and/or viewing:
- Scientific text.
- Articles.
- Events in the popular press.
