One of my favorite units of all time is Dry Ice and the Coordinate Plane. Soap is everywhere. Dry Ice gas fills the air. Students are inevitably laughing and thinking and shrieking with delight. They get to touch the dry ice bubbles and plan future investigations. Students think about the properties of matter before, during, and after the dry ice hits the soapy water and watch suds enter the air.
I teach it to my 5th graders usually, and we investigate the properties of dry ice through mathematics. We launch the unit by watching a really funny video by Steve Spangler on Youtube, and then we talk about which experiments we want to recreate, and what control and manipulated variables we will use to investigate them.
Next week, we are going to graph the different rates of sublimation on a coordinate plane. We will measure out various sizes of Dry Ice and see if the rate they sublime varies according to original size. The students will determine the exact experiment and flush it out accordingly. I'm looking forward to seeing my kids' thinking and what they come up with!
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