Frozen Phenomena
These resources offer a hot opportunity for students to investigate frozen phenomena. Phenomena such as these can elicit student questions that lead to investigations in states of matter, phase changes, kinetic molecular theory, and more.
Phenomena for investigation
Why do many glaciers appear blue? They’re ice, aren’t they?
Why does snow produce ground fog on a dry, cold night?
Why do ice cubes crack?
What causes icebergs to turn upside down?
What makes icebergs explode?
How can snow be man-made?
What makes dry ice explode?
Frozen science concepts
Core science concepts routinely taught across disciplines and grade levels help explain the phenomena above and can be introduced to students at the appropriate grade level, especially if they are facilitated by student-generated particle diagrams and developed further as students strengthen their understanding.
Dive deeper into some of the concepts used to explain frozen phenomena with these resources:
- CO2OL Demonstrations with Dry Ice Kit—Five inquiry activities that cover states of matter, phase changes, phase diagrams, sublimation, density, buoyancy, and solubility.
- Freezing Point Depression Activity: Ice Cream—Students look at colligative properties and freezing-point depression while making an individual serving of ice cream.
- In a Fog? Cloud Formation—Students examine the roles temperature and pressure play in cloud formation.
- Cooling Diagram for t-Butanol—Students generate data to construct a cooling and warming curve for t-butanol and use the graph to determine this tertiary alcohol’s boiling and freezing points.
- Borax Snowflakes—Students use solutions of borax to learn about crystallization.
- Do-It-Yourself Snowflakes—Students grow ice crystals large enough to be examined so they can discuss structure and function related to the properties of water.
