Intel Education: Unit & Project Plans: Junior Cert Physics

Overview and Benefits

Project Design

Unit Plan Index

Instructional Strategies

Junior Cert Physics - Density

At a Glance

Grade Level:
Junior Cert year 3

Subjects: Science

Topics: Physics / break down into sub-topics e.g. density

Time Needed: It has been designed so that students can practice scientific process at their own pace

Key Learnings: Scientific process

Things You Need

Materials and Resources

Unit Summary
Scientific process is central to the revised Junior Certificate syllabus, which amongst other things, aims to encourage the procedural, cognitive affective and communication skills through practical activities that foster investigation, imagination and creativity.

Curriculum Framing Questions
Planning and evaluation are central to this tool which has been designed to allow students complete the investigation cycle of planning, designing, experimenting, evaluating, redesigning and redoing, based on experimental evidence.

	Essential Question What's the relationship between an object and it's density?
	Unit Questions What am I trying to find out? What materials will I investigate? What am I trying to measure? How am I going to measure it? What Units of measurement will I use?

Student Objectives/Learning Outcomes
This activity will allow students the opportunity to practice scientific process by carrying out investigations on their own, outside the classroom, thus promoting independent learning. It will give them the opportunity to plan and discover by trial and error the correct method to carry out and evaluate an investigation.
By investigating the effect of an object's mass and volume, the student can work out the density of that material.
The student is given a scenario in which they are working as part of a crime scene investigation unit. They must investigate as to whether or not the given objects are real or fake. By measuring the mass and volume of the "real" objects, they can work out the density. Once they have documented the actual density of each of the "real" objects they can measure the density of the objects under investigation and work out which object is false.

Instructional Procedures
The tool has been designed to give the student the opportunity to plan an investigation and discover by trial and error the correct method to carry out and evaluate an investigation.

Prerequisite Skills
Students wStudents will need to be comfortable using a computer for experimental purpose.
Students will also need a basic knowledge of volume, mass and density. A basic ability to apply the setup questions in a practical way is also required.

Differentiated Instruction

	Resource Student
	Gifted Student
	English Language Learner

Materials and Resources
Internet Resources - www.skoool.ie*
Technology - Hardware - Any PC
Technology - Software - Windows 2000+

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