SCIENCE CONCEPT:
- Air pollution is a serious problem for today's world.
Pollution is measured in the atmosphere by parts per million or ppm.
Measuring a million is a difficult concept, but given the concrete,
students will be able to better visualize the ppm.
STUDENT OBJECTIVE:
- Students will observe through 3 activities how to
measure 1,000,000 and to better understand the parts per million when
measuring 1,000,000.
OVERVIEW:
- In this activity, students will be constructing a 1 inch
container and filling it with rice grains. Students will then count how
many grains of rice will fill the container. Given the amount of rice
grains it takes to fill one container, how many cubic inches would a box
have to hold 1,000,000 grains of rice.
TEACHER TEXT:
- Pollution is a major world problem. Scientists have devised a system
to measure the pollutants in the air. Pollutants are measured in
parts per million or ppm. What does ppm look like? 1,000,000 is an
abstract number to visualize due to its size. Putting 1,000,000 into
perspective will allow this number to become concrete. To look at
1,000,000, it would look like this: 1000 x 1000 or 100 x 10,000 or
10 x 100,000. This is too difficult to count. By building a model,
a better understanding of 1,000,000 will be understood.
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PREPARATION TIME:
- 10 minutes.
LESSON TIME:
- 60 minutes.
TEACHER PREP:
- gather all materials and place on table for students to gather.
WORDS TO KNOW:
- pollution
- parts per million
- cubic inch
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