HELEN ZHANG, DAVID JACKSON, JEFFREY KIEL, LEIGH ESTABROOKS, SO LIM KIM, DEOKSOON KIM, STEPHANIE COUCH, AND G. MICHAEL BARNETT
Science Scope, October 2021
The “Chill Out!” unit engages students in inventing a lunch box to better serve users (e.g., people who spend all day in the sun such as landscapers). During the unit, students think about real-life scenarios when lunch boxes do not meet the needs of users; learn relevant science concepts; investigate practices of keeping warm or cold in different cultures; and integrate knowledge from culture, engineering, and science to invent and test a lunch box. The iterative design process and working with different materials help clarify students’ misconceptions and augment and refine their understanding of heat transfer. Additionally, by engaging students in thinking about familiar things in a different way, this unit presents a low barrier to entry and promotes students’ engagement and creativity.
