This week the 2/3 STEM class started our project on basic chemistry, states of matter, and phase changes. Our driving question is “How can we as engineers use our understanding of solids, liquids, and gases to invent a new product?” We started off our project by watching some classic infomercials to talk about what problem the product solved, what information you would need to figure out how it worked, and who was the target audience for the product.

Since this project will involve many experiments, investigations, and opportunities for observation and data collection, we then started our exploration of matter by practicing how to make scientific observations during experiments. The students practiced making detailed observations as they watched how food coloring dissolved differently in hot and cold water, and came up with ideas as to why it was behaving differently in those temperatures.  We then discussed how matter is anything that has mass and takes up space, and that atoms are the building blocks of matter. To get a sense of how small atoms are, we explored the website “Scale of the Universe”, which takes the students from the largest thing known to man (the observable universe) to the smallest! The students are excited to learn more about matter and get creative as they invent their products!