Challenge 3: Sink your raft. Challenge students to now submerse their floating vessel. Negative buoyancy Many will add materials that have negative buoyancy to counteract the materials discovery with positive buoyancy. (10 minutes) Discussion: You may wish to discuss other methods of making the rafts sink (e.g. putting a hole in the hull, changing orientation). Once the students have sunk their vessel, introduce the concept of neutral buoyancy (objects that neither float nor sink but maintain a fixed position in the water column). Some real life examples include fish swim bladders, and SCUBA divers’ Neutral buoyancy control devices. buoyancy discovery + Challenge 4: Neutral Buoyancy. Challenge students to make their vessels neutrally application buoyant (40 minutes) Helpful tip: Achieving neutral buoyancy is difficult and may take significant tinkering. If students are struggling, you can them a syringe filled with air as a swim bladder. This makes fine tuning their submersible relatively easy by adding or subtracting small volumes of air. are a number of extension activities that can be tailored to the individual Extension groups and their designs, such as: Activities Controllable buoyancy: Introduce a second syringe or some aspirin and (allow 20+ challenge students to create a submersible that floats or on command minutes for Introduce fluids of different density e.g. oil to be used in the submersible – group success) Design Sharing: Share design approach, successes and challenges, and encourage class reflection as a group. Facilitate questions and discussion on workshop, Wrap up including: (Allow 25 Was testing important during the design minutes for What would you do differently next time? reflection and If you were to this full scale what materials could you use? pack up) Submersible deconstruction: recycle as much material as possible. Further Investigation Real-world examples that face the challenges of neutral buoyancy include NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and Australia’s Deepsea Challenger (videos available on YouTube using search terms and ). Students can investigate the advantages and disadvantages of the different submersibles, including remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and human occupied vehicles (HOVs).
Negative buoyancy discovery (10 minutes) Challenge 3: Sink your raft. Challenge students to now submerse their floating vessel. Many will add materials that have negative buoyancy to counteract the materials with positive buoyancy. Discussion: You may wish to discuss other methods of making the rafts sink (e.g. putting a hole in the hull, changing orientation). Neutral buoyancy discovery + application (40 minutes) Once the students have sunk their vessel, introduce the concept of neutral buoyancy (objects that neither float nor sink but maintain a fixed position in the water column). Some real life examples include fish swim bladders, and SCUBA divers’ buoyancy control devices. Challenge 4: Neutral Buoyancy. Challenge students to make their vessels neutrally buoyant Helpful tip: Achieving neutral buoyancy is difficult and may take significant tinkering. If students are struggling, you can them a syringe filled with air as a swim bladder. This makes fine tuning their submersible relatively easy by adding or subtracting small volumes of air. Extension Activities (allow 20+ minutes for group success) are a number of extension activities that can be tailored to the individual groups and their designs, such as: Controllable buoyancy: Introduce a second syringe or some aspirin and challenge students to create a submersible that floats or on command Introduce fluids of different density e.g. oil – to be used in the submersible Wrap up (Allow 25 minutes for reflection and pack up) Design Sharing: Share design approach, successes and challenges, and encourage class reflection as a group. Facilitate questions and discussion on workshop, including: Was testing important during the design What would you do differently next time? If you were to this full scale what materials could you use? Submersible deconstruction: recycle as much material as possible. Further Investigation Real-world examples that face the challenges of neutral buoyancy include NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, and Australia’s Deepsea Challenger (videos available on YouTube using search terms and ). Students can investigate the advantages and disadvantages of the different submersibles, including remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and human occupied vehicles (HOVs).
Simple%20Submersibles%20Lesson%20Plan.docx