Technology and stress on the environment

Students will build a bubble-powered rocket and “blast it off.” Students will examine the stress to their immediate environment, alternative choices, and the cost of repairing the damage. They will list other types of technology and possible environmental stress.

A lesson plan for grades 9–12 Science

By Geol 130

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Learning outcomes

Students will be able to list the effects on their school environment after they launch their “bubble-powered rocket.” They will discuss stress to the environment and types of choices for a solution.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

90 minutes

Materials/resources

• six activity tables
• blank printer paper
• eighteen thirty-five millimeter film canisters
• tape
• nine effervescing (fizzing) antacid tablets-cut in half
• paper towels
• water in eighteen small labeled plastic containers
• safety glasses
• six boxes of colored pencils
• One copy of the Build a Bubble-Powered Rocket directions (PDF) for the teacher

Optional: For the students you may to distribute individual copies of the rocket pattern (PDF).

Technology resources

If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat, it can be downloaded free of charge from the Adobe website.

Pre-activities

Arrange above materials for easy access. Fill water containers. Keep effervescing tablets in your lab apron until actually needed.

Activities

Schedule:

• Discussion: ten minutes
• Rocket assembly inside: thirty minutes
• Blasting off outside: twenty-five minutes
• Clean up outside and inside: ten minutes
• Assessment and discussion: fifteen minutes

1. Discuss the immediate environment of the classroom. What does it mean to put stress on your classroom environment? Ask for environments outside the classroom that are stressed. (In classroom: litter, misplaced books, and leftover fragments of rocket pieces. Outside: students littering, making their own tracks in the grass instead of using the side walk.) Discuss if students think there is stress on the environment when a space shuttle takes off.
2. Present the idea of blasting their own rocket in space. Pass out the bubble powered rocket activity at activity tables. In this activity each person makes a rocket.

   Directions:

   • Cut out all the pieces for your rocket.
   • Tape fins to your rocket body. They can be decorated with colored pencils.
   • Roll the circle (with a wedge cut out) into a cone and tape it to the rocket’s top.
   • As a group, go outside. Line up on the sidewalk arms length apart.
   • Discuss safety, keeping a distance from neighbors, following teacher directions exactly, and wearing safety glasses.

   Teacher gives these directions and class follows them together:

   • Turn the rocket upside down and remove the canister’s lid.
   • Fill the canister one-third full of water.
   • Quickly: drop one half on an effervescing antacid tablet into the canister, snap the lid on tight.
   • Quickly: set your rocket on the sidewalk and back away. Your rocket will blast off.
3. If students don’t clean up their outside environment and inside environment, remind them to do so.
4. Students will do the assessment and turn in their papers.
5. Discuss the dissolved tablet, effect on grass, and if the rocket left marks on the sidewalk. Did the students have to be reminded to clean up? Remind them that some action has to be taken in order to care for the earth. Also discuss the quality of life that is gained from the knowledge of technology that is used by cars, shuttle flights, and coal-fired plants. What is the resulting stress from these on the environment?
6. Homework: Students will look for signs in their city of environmental stress that is due to technology. The list will be discussed and turned in the next day.

Assessment

Students will answer the following questions on a sheet of paper:

1. What would happen if you did the same thing with a balloon? (balloon would stretch, the canister couldn’t)
2. Did your indoor and outdoor environment change because of your activity? What did you do about the change? (did they clean up inside and outside) What did it "cost" the students to clean up? (personal time and effort)
3. What exactly made your rocket blast off? [When the tablet dissolves little bubbles of gas (CO₂) escape and the bubbles go up instead of down because they weigh less than water. When the bubbles get to the surface of the water they break open. Now the gas pushes on the sides of the canister. The canister is not like a balloon, which will stretch so eventually something has to give and it "pops its top" (which is really its bottom) along with the rocket attached. Real rockets work along the same idea but instead of tablets they use rocket fuel.]

Supplemental information

These classroom activities have been developed by the Space Place staff at JPL and have been published in past issues of the International Technology Education Association (ITEA).

Remind students as they progress through their activity to make a list of how the environment might be affected. Discussions of their findings will help an understanding of the alternative choices facing human societies in their stewardship of the earth.