bottles

Triple Beam Balance – Bottles of Stuff!

Liz Belasic2 Comments

bottle_mass_5

Materials

  • Single Serving Size (1L or less) bottles filled with various items
    • students brought in materials of their choice over the course of a week
  • Triple Beam Balance (TBB)
  • Mass Set
  • Student Handout (Triple Beam Balance Bottles pdf)

bottle_mass_4

Procedures – Part 1

  1. Provide each lab group with an assortment of bottles
  2. Students will arrange the bottles from lightest to heaviest by making observations
  3. They will record the order of the bottles and their contents with #1 as the lightest and #10 the heaviest on their handout
    • my groups used 9 bottles, but there is room on the handout for 10
  4. Using the set of masses, they will estimate the mass of each bottle by holding a bottle in one hand and a mass in the other hand, recording their estimations on the handout

bottle_mass_2

Procedures – Part 2

  1. Students will transfer their estimation to the back page
  2. Using the TBB they will record the actual masses of the bottles
  3. Then they will rank the bottles from lightest (#1) to heaviest (#10) and compare their estimation to the actual masses. How close were the estimations to the actual masses? Did they place the bottles in the correct order?

Results

Bottle # Mass (g) Bottle # Mass (g) Bottle # Mass (g)
1 126.9 14 281 27 192.3
2 72.9 15 336.5 28 330.9
3 29.6 16 223 29 465
4 438 17 70 30 195
5 202.1 18 36.43 31 59.1
6 166 19 185 32 168.8
7 63.1 20 88 33 33
8 301.5 21 140.1 34 100
9 224 22 49.1 35 402.5
10 610+ 23 73.3 36 187.1
11 67.1 24 54.9 37 318.4
12 251.8 25 27.5 38
13 410.1 26 406 39

You can also use these bottles as part of your density unit, see my blog entry for more information.

Density Bottles Demo

Liz Belasic2 Comments
Density Bottles
Density Bottles: Sand, Air, Rice, Water, & Cotton Balls in 500 mL bottles

How to use density bottles:

Demo & Discussion – For this part of the lesson, students will not handle the bottles, they will answer discussion questions based on their observations only.

  1. Share observations about the bottles.
  2. What do the bottles have in common?
  3. What is different about the bottles?
  4. What do you think the original contents of the bottle were?
  5. What phases of matter are shown?
  6. Are any of these bottles empty? Explain.
  7. Do all of these bottles have air in them?
  8. Which bottle has more air in it: Cotton Balls or Water? Explain.
  9. Which bottle is filled the most? Least?
  10. Which bottle has has the most ‘stuff’ in it? Least?
  11. Which bottle is the heaviest? Lightest?
  12. How would you order these bottles from lightest to heaviest?
  13. Estimate the mass of each bottle in grams.
  14. Which bottle is the densest?
  15. How would you arrange these bottles from least to most dense?
  16. Which of these bottles can have more of the same ‘stuff’ added to the inside of the bottle? Explain.
  17. Which bottle(s) would float in a tank of water? (I do this at the very end of the lesson with everyone at the sink)

Hands On Exploration

  1. Each group will have one set of bottles or take turns using the demo bottles and sharing their findings.
  2. Using a triple beam balance, the volume of the bottles, and a tank of water, answer as many of the questions above as you can. (for our calculations, we use the volume of the bottle’s original content (500 mL of sport drink) to give us an approximate density, not the actual density – for comparison purposes only)
  3. How did your findings compare to your observations and predictions?
  4. Dunk tank – time to find out which one will float!

Further Exploration

Give each group of students a new set of bottles (ones that they have brought in from home) and have them make observations, predictions, and density calculations.

Additional Bottle Ideas:

  • Rocks/pebbles
  • laundry detergent – liquid or powder
  • paper clips
  • paper shreds
  • crayons
  • marbles
  • flour
  • bread crumbs
  • coffee beans
  • beans
  • different shapes of pasta
  • pom-poms
  • pop corn kernels or popped
  • Lego pieces
  • salt
  • dish-soap
  • beads
  • yarn/string
  • etc…

Have each student bring in a bottle from home filled with the contents of their choice so that you have enough bottle to compare. Match similar bottle shapes/sizes together for each group or match similar contents in different sized bottles for comparison.

You can also use these bottles as part of a Triple Beam Balance Activity (blog entry).