Apologia Chemistry: It’s All About Density Wrap-up. Finally.

Flinn Scientific has some of the best material, kits, and activities for Chemistry.  I ordered the density kit initially for my Conceptual Chemistry classes in public school.  (Most of the college bound students in both private and public school have mastered density.). (It’s All About Density is the student hand-out.  Here are the teacher notes.).

Instead of using the kit, I take out several objects: marbles, cylinders, and cubes.  I want the kids to compare measuring volume by displacement in water with measuring volume by geometry.  The kids wrote a hypothesis speculating which volume method was more accurate.  One kid, Ian, said the null hypothesis; the two are equally accurate.  The kids must create a data table with three objects: a sphere, a cylinder, and a cube.  In the data are the respective masses, volume by displacement, volume by geometry, density, accepted values, and percent error.  Lastly, the students must write whether the data supported or refuted their hypotheses.

I’ll post a good example of the lab report next week.  One child did finish; I returned it to him without taking a photo.

The only issue was the displacement volumes were more accurate than geometry volumes.  Lacie missed class.  She was confused anyway.  I found calipers; she will redo the lab with calipers next week.