#334. Creative Expressions: Phase Changes

Science, level: Middle
Posted by Michael H. Edmondson (medmond@hotmail.com).
Hardaway High School/Muscogee County Schools, Columbus, GA USA
Materials Required: Paper, pencil
Activity Time: One half typical period
Concepts Taught: Phase Changes in Matter

After discussion of phase changes, have your students place
themselves in the position of a water molecule, ice molecule,
or steam molecule. Describe the process of changing phase.

Two examples follow:

(1) Hello, my name is Walter. I suffer from multiple person-
ality disorder. One day I'm ice, the next I could be steam,
but today I am water. I have many friends but I haven't run
into many yet today. Now I have just been placed into the
steel canyon (a pot.) I feel a change beginning. It's starting
to get hot. There go my friends Ben and Jeremy, off into the
sky. I fear that I will never see them again. I go rising into
the sky. I've become steam!

Ben Watson
Jeremy Vincent
Physical Science

Example 2:

Hi! My name is Bob. I live in a refrigerator. It was a hot summer
day. Sally put me in a cup with a couple of my friends and poured
Coke on me. Before I died, my particles very slow and the arrangement
of them was very close and very definite. I had a definite shape until
until that one summer's day! Boy, was I a hunk of ice! All of the girls
had a crush on me! When Sally left me outside, I started getting hot.
Then all of a sudden, my particles started moving faster and
spreading out. Before I knew it, I had melted away in that
big glass of Coke. Now, I'm nobody different. I'm just water.

Christina Register
Ghavin Johnson
Physical Science