Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
My name is Johnnie Lyman and I am a graduate student at the Scripps institution
of Oceanography and I work with Duke Raleigh who is a chemistry teacher at Eastlake HIgh
School. The project that we developed works with x-rays florescence and we actually use
florescence beads to model how scientists in my lab, shoot x-rays at a deeps sea core
and it florescence back in the x-ray spectrum and we can figure out what elements are in
that core. We use a core from San Diego, so students can see data thats been collected
locally and were actually looking at changes in lead over time off the coast of San Diego.
Our target audience was a chemistry class in High school. We decided that a biology
background wasn't necessary for this. We do like to tie it to biology since there are
organisms mud, but its not necessary for this activity. Key topics that we wanted students
to get to know in this was gathering data, learn how to create a graph from data that they
had collected, and analyzing that data in two contents, one just looking at it on their
paper and two if we gave them that data over a period of time, so we wanted students to
be able to look at their model and take that and apply it to the real world data that we
were showing them later in the period. To engage students, we did a lot of different
parts, so first we showed them florescent minerals and any students that ever seen a
rock glow immediately that is exciting. Secondly we showed them some materials from around
the house, so we showed them tonic water that they might have seen in the grocery store
and showed them that that can fluoresce. Third we showed them beads that can fluoresce, so
as soon as they realized that thing will change color with sunlight exposure alone, they were
hooked. So we wanted to show students something that was a little more relevant to them as
well. Glowing beads are cool, but how does this affect their life's? So we showed them
data from off the coast of San Diego, so we wanted them to see whats changing in your
environment. Whats around you that you can learn about using this technique?