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Changes in States of Matter

Teacher Page

This is the link to the STUDENT page that you will assign your students

In this lab, students will fill out a foldable on the three primary states of matter. Students will watch a video showing ice melting from a solid to a liquid and boiling from a liquid to a gas. Students will graph a heating curve for water. Students will answer questions about the experiment they observed, and the ideal heating curve for water. 

Learning Objectives:

  • Students will use data to generate a heating curve graph.
  • Observe the temperature at each phase change.

Teachers: Request an answer key for this virtual lab.  


Teachers: Please print the “States of Matter” foldable for students.

Printable: States of Matter foldable 

Instructions for teachers to guide students in completing the “States of Matter” foldable.  


Students will complete this foldable while watching the following video.

 


Now that students have completed the foldable over States of Matter, they will watch a video with a computer-generated heating curve as ice melts in a flask. Students should observe changes of temperature in degrees Celsius over time as the ice melts and the water boils.

Teachers: The questions below are included in the Google Doc of the student page. Additionally, there is a link to data for students to graph their heating curve in Question 1. Students can use the linked Jam Board to make their graph online.

Students: It’s your turn to try graphing the data collected during the experiment you just watched. The questions below will guide you through your next steps.

 Questions:

  1. Using the Student Data, complete the Heating Curve for Water Graph on the Jam Board.
  2. Be sure to title the graph and label the x-axis and y-axis to include units.
  3. What is the boiling point for water on this graph?
  4. Why is the boiling point not 100 degrees Celsius?

Students: Now that you have graphed a heating curve on the Jam Board, you should view the following video to check your work. Then continue answering questions #5-17.

 

Continue answering questions #5-17: 

  1. Given a drawing of an ideal heating curve for water on a second Jam Board, label: solid, melting, liquid, boiling and gas.
  2. What is the correct temperature for the melting point of pure water in degrees Celsius?
  3. What is the correct temperature for the boiling point of pure water in degrees Celsius?
  4. Put an appropriate title on the graph.
  5. Label the y-axis.
  6. Label the x-axis.
  7. Put the temperature for the melting point of water on the y-axis.
  8. Put the temperature for the boiling point of water on the y-axis
  9. What is/are improvement/s that could be made to this experiment to get a realistic temperature for solid water? For the melting point?
  10. Why do you think there was a stopper on the flask?
  11. Why do you think the stopper came off of the flask?
  12. What could be done differently to speed up this experiment?
  13. What in the experiment surprised you about the change in temperature over time?


Resources:

 

This lab was created with support from the Ren Research group at Purdue University with funding from the National Science Foundation grant NSF CHE 2102049.

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