Boil, Boil, Toil and Trouble:
The International Collaborative Boiling Point Project

Teacher Planning Guide

The boiling point project lesson can be divided nicely into a seven day unit allowing for 40 minute periods. The following is a suggested guide for each day's activities. The guide assumes the teacher will be participating in the "Official Boiling Point Project" where interaction with other schools will be facilitated by the Boiling Point Project leaders.

Unit Objective: Through collaboration and experimentation, students will discover and understand the correlation between the boiling point of water and the elevation at which water is boiled

Day 1

Lesson Objective: Students will explore how the boiling point of water is determined

Activities: Lesson will begin with question: How do we know when water is boiling? Student's ideas will be written on board.

Students will divide into groups and boil a pot of water following the guidelines posted here.

Using a graphing program, have students graph the time and temperature information. Once they've graphed this information, print out the graph and write in the descriptions of the water at the appropriate time intervals.

Homework: Students should take home graph and jot in journal observations about why water temperature tapered off, how that tapering off corresponded to the physical differences in the water and why there might be a relationship.

Day 2

Lesson Objectives: Students will discover how boiling point is determined. Students will send introductory emails to collaborative team members.

Give students 10 minutes to discuss their journal entries from the night before. Write on board observations by students. If necessary, have the class send an email message to Dr. Neutrino, the physicist to find out why the water temperature tapered off and how it correlates to the water boiling.

Ask the students whether they think that the temperature will level off at the same temperature today? At the same temperature tomorrow? At the same temperature at their homes? At the same temperature in Mexico? At the same temperature with different types of heating devices?

Tell the students that they will be participating in a collaborative project with students in other parts of the world to determine if anything affects the boiling point of water. Explain that the next three days all schools will be participating in boiling water and determining the boiling point. Begin by preparing and sending introductory email from school with information about school, students, number of people in class, elevation of school, latitude and longitude of school (so students can pinpoint on map). This information can be found using the Internet by accessing the distance web site.

As homework, have students research for reasons why boiling point tapers off.

Day 3

Lesson Objective: Students will determine the boiling point of water.

10 minute discussion of why boiling point tapers off -- read response from physicist if available. (As you heat a pot of water, heat first goes to raising temp of water. At certain temp, water has received enough heat to become a gas. That's the boiling point. In the future, heat won't go to increasing temperature, but instead to converting liquid to gas. Converting liquid to gas takes energy, so you use energy from the heating device for this conversion.)

Divide students into groups to perform boiling point experiment again -- this time to relay to other participants via email. Graph temperature vs. time. Write down time of day experiment attempted, number of people in room, air temp in room, elevation of room, type of heating device used and boiling point.

Day 4

Lesson Objective: Students will determine the boiling point of water. Students will ascertain the location of project partners on map.

Begin by disseminating copies of introductory emails from other participating schools. Have students pinpoint other participating schools on map.

Perform BP experiment again in small groups. Graph temperature vs. time. Write down time of day experiment attempted, number of people in room, air temp in room, elevation of room, type of heating device used and boiling point.

Day 5

Lesson Objective: Students will determine the boiling point of water. Students will find average for group work. Students will send data to project partners.

Perform BP experiment for third time in groups. Graph third set of data.

Have each group report on their average boiling point for all 3 days of activity. Find the mean boiling point for each day with all group's readings.

Together as a class, draft an email to other schools with final results.

Include in email mean boiling point, elevation, time of day, number of people in room, temp in room and heating device used.

Day 6

Lesson Objective: Students will look at all data to determine if there is a correlation between any of the factors -- temperature in room, number of people in room, time of day, elevation in room, or type of heating device used -- and boiling point.

In groups, students will look at their data as well as participating classes data. Students will graph BP vs. each of the other factors. Students will look for correlations. Students will draft a hypothesis for why they found correlations.

Homework: In journal, write why they think they might have found correlation among certain factors.

Day 7

Lesson Objective: Students will explore the relationship between boiling point and elevation.

Teacher will begin by soliciting journal reactions to collaborative project. Relationship between boiling point and elevation will be discovered. Students will give reasons why they think this might have occurred.

Teacher will then lead into discussion of this phenomenon. Students will end with an email to project partners with their final conclusions.

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