The Materials World Module Series and the Polymer Module: A Design-Oriented Approach to Teach Scientific Concepts to Gra
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The Materials World Module Series and the Polymer Module: A Design-Oriented Approach to Teach Scientific Concepts to Grades 912 Students through Materials Science SonBinh T. Nguyen,∗ Jennifer K. Cocson, and Carol L. Colby Department of Chemistry and the Materials Research Center, 2145 Sheridan Road, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-3113, USA. Robert P. H. Chang** Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Center, 2145 Sheridan Road, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. Keith E. Miller Department of Chemical Engineering and the Materials Research Center, 2145 Sheridan Road, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. ABSTRACT The Materials World Modules (MWM), funded by the National Science Foundation, is a series of nine short texts that introduce science and scientific concepts to high school students through guided investigations of the materials that surrounds us in the modern world. Designed to be flexible, these modules can be incorporated into a high school science curriculum as a learning-by-inquiry addition to the main science texts. Depending on the time that the teacher has, each module can be covered in 8 to 15 class periods. Using an inquiry method of learning, the modules prompt the students to generate questions about a subject and find experimental approaches which will lead them to the answers. The modules encourage the students to learn by carrying out simple experiments using readily available materials. The Polymers Module of the MWM series aims at introducing the concepts of polymer chemistry and polymeric materials to an audience that has had some exposure to general chemistry. It asks the students to investigate their surroundings to find polymer-based objects and to infer the properties of those objects from knowing the structures of the monomeric building blocks. It introduces the relation between polymer properties and structure and that between polymer properties and molecular weight by suggesting experiments that students can do with poly(vinyl alcohol) and poly(vinyl acetate) films. Finally, it encourages the students to use what they have learned to design simple devices using polymeric materials. An example of such a device is a humidity sensor that is fabricated from thin polymer films. INTRODUCTION In September 2000, John Glenn and his National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century released an alarming report on the current status of K-12 mathematics and science education in the United States [1]. Entitled “Before It’s Too Late”, the Glenn report concluded that “it is abundantly clear from the evidence already at hand that we are not doing the job that we should do—or can do—in teaching our children to understand and use ideas from these fields. Our children are falling behind; they are simply not ‘world-class ∗
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learners’ when it comes to mathematics and science.” This
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