Designing, evaluating, and redesigning our cups were in full swing the last few days!  After careful discussions involving lots of the science principles we've figured out, student groups were off to make a recommendation!  Look at all this hard work and how it paid off!  You've got one proud teacher here! 

​No two cups were the same, but many groups met the criteria of the challenge to minimize energy transfer all staying within the constraints they set forth!

 Now that sixth graders have modeled the scientific thinking behind energy transfer with different cup materials and cup features, we're running wild with the Cold Cup Challenge!  It's been amazing to see how students are really thinking about all the scientific principles we've uncovered over these weeks to think about:

1.  Energy transfer
2. Particle collisions
3.  Measuring temperature
4.  Considering criteria and constraints

I am one proud teacher!  Continue to check back as we add all our our thinking and designs!  If you're really curious, students are given a budget and are highly suggested to consider the environmental impact when designing their cup.  They also are constrained by the number of materials they can use.

The ultimate goal--don't have the temperature of the cold water in their newly designed cup elevate by 1 degree Celsius in bright light and 2 degrees Celsius in regular light.

Who cannot be excited to see all the science we've learned behind what we thought were such simple cups!  After much thought, discussing, and modeling our thinking...we came to consensus about how each feature may play a critical role in preventing energy transfer in a cup system.  I am so proud of these sixth graders!

Here is some of our group thinking that lead into establishing consensus!  Way to go 6th grade....now we'll use this knowledge to engineer newly designed cups that can withstand heat and light (hopefully) as well as fit in a cup holder and not be too expensive!  (Oh wait, it shouldn't be terrible for the environment, too!)

So after careful reflection, we still didn't have agreement on whether it was the heat moves or the cold moves, as we have some evidence to support ideas from both sides.  But one more investigation (with butter no less) might help!

If the heat under the butter moved, then we'd see an increase in temperature over time.  But if the cold moved, then we'd see a decrease in temperature over time. What's the data tell you?

The molecules are colliding with more heat, transferring their energy to the molecules nearby (which have less energy).  We see an increase in temperature throughout, providing more evidence that molecules with more energy collide with molecules with less energy, transferring the energy onward...

We worked towards consensus, thinking how this butter investigation could explain how collisions between air, the cup, and the liquid inside get the cold liquid to warm up.  Look where we've come, folks!

What should we do with all this science knowledge?  Should we attempt to redesign a cup to keep a beverage cold? I say, "Why not!??!"

I've gotta say this!  We're really FIGURING THINGS OUT!  Way to go 6th graders!  We took some time today to put all our evidence together and develop a model to explain how a cup of room temperature water cools down in a bath of cold water.  These seemed much easier to explain since using our simulators and our marble investigations, for sure!

After careful reflection, we don't have 100% agreement still on whether it's heat or cold moving...so we have to figure that out still!

Our animations were great! We're really figuring out what's happening to all these particles when they collide...

Digging a little deeper, Mrs. Brinza found another simulator that actually puts in the amounts of energy we've been figuring have been transferring.  We see how the molecule with more energy transfers its energy when it collides with a molecule with less energy.  And we're also seeing the kinetic energy values increase as more molecules enter the system.

We're also recognizing that our cup systems have many parts, and we've figured out LOTS about the air around the cup, the cup walls themselves, and the liquid inside the cups. We're also figured out a TON about energy transfer and how each molecule (with different amounts of kinetic energy and therefore a different temperature) affects the molecules it interacts with.  

 Building out our cup system is getting us thinking the following:

1.  The air outside the cup interacts with the walls. Since the air molecules have more energy than the solid cup molecules, they'd transfer their energy to the cups' walls.

2. From there, the cup walls would be next to the liquid molecules, colliding into them, transferring the energy to the liquid, making it have more energy, and therefore, be hotter!

BUT...what if the liquid is not cold on the inside and instead is hot on the inside?  Do those molecules interact with the cups' walls and then the air?  Or what?  We're still trying to figure out this idea about whether it's heat that's moving or cold that's moving...

So we modeled our thinking with some marbles to represent what we know about gases, liquids, and solids (all at different temperatures with different amounts of energy) and how they interact with one another, all in hopes that this will explain how the fancy cups work better at keeping hot liquid hotter and cold liquids colder than regular 'ol cups...

We realized the animations we developed to show what was going on with the molecules were limited. We aren't professional animators and our time was limited.  But there's some things we're thinking about that are challenging to show.

1. For example, we know hotter things become colder.  We know energy is transferred.
2.  When hot things are near cold things, they "settle" onto a temperature in between them, like an average almost.
3.  We know collisions are happening in a substance and between substances that are near each other.

So Mrs. Brinza did some research, and there is an app that can truly show what so many of the students have figured out with their investigation ideas.  We are noticing things about kinetic energy, temperature, what happens in a collision between particles and what happens when more particles are added to as substance.  Check back to see what we make sense of next week when we run the simulator again!!!

Our investigations regarding heat movement got us thinking that if we were to zoom in on the molecules, we'd be able to see just how the hot liquids are getting cooler and the cooler liquids were getting warmer.

We used a molecule simulator, a food coloring experiment, and a candy dissolving video to help us think about what these molecules must be doing when they're next to each other!

We realized that light isn't the ONLY thing getting the cups to warm up over time.  Heat must play a role, too, since cups in the darkness increased in temperature.  The air temperature inside the cabinets (where we placed our cups in darkness) was definitely warmer than the liquid inside the cups.

We wanted to set up various conditions with both warm and cold liquids, and differing temperatures around the cups.  We thought about how we could change the temperatures around the cups consistently...

Since blankets can't be a heat source, we couldn't use them.

Since a hair dryer wouldn't create a consistent temperature around the cups, that was out of the question, too.

We don't have a fridge in our classroom, so that would be a pain running down the hall to Ms. Trainer's room.

But we do have access to hot and cold water, so we decided to stick cups of different temperatures within closed containers of different temperatures of water.  We agreed to control the amount of water within each setup, along with the time we ran the investigations!

Our data is telling some interesting stories and there seems to be some general patterns, some patterns in the final temperatures, and some patterns when there's a BIG difference between the starting temperatures.  

With all of our data from our temperature changing/light investigations, we came to the following conclusions in our scientist circle:

1.  Light affects every cup's temperature by increasing it.  Light that is transmitted or absorbed makes the greatest impact, and we saw the largest temperature changes then.

2.   Different cups seem to respond to light differently.  Clear cups had the most light transmitted. Black cups had the most light absorbed. 

3.  Light plays a role in warming up cold liquids, but there's something else that warms up light, too, when light isn't present.  We're thinking the hot air (or hotter air than the temperature of the liquids in the cups) plays a role.  We're thinking we need to do some investigations with heat to help us better understand this!

We built out models to show what light does with each cup's surface, quantifying them in a mathematical model to show light being reflected, transmitted or absorbed on different surfaces.  Stay tuned for our thoughts on heat-related investigations!