Science Unit/Lesson Planner

Topic: Understanding density and objects Context: Can you walk on custard?
Year/s: Year 3 / 4 Level/s: Level 1 and 2 Duration: 30 mins
Contextual Strands (Knowledge/Understanding)
Resources Achievement Objective: Physical inquiry and physics concepts Level: Level 1 and 2
 6 plastic cups filled with water
 Piece of wood, small stone, post it note, a Students will:
teaspoon on earth Explore everyday examples of physical phenomena, such as movement, forces, electricity and magnetism,
 Prediction Hand out light, sound, waves and heat.
 White board and computer
Nature of Science Strand (Overarching strand)
Achievement Objective: Investigating in Science Level: Level 1 and 2
Digital tools
Students will:
Custard video: Extend their experiences and personal explanations of the natural world through exploration, play, asking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN2D5y- questions, and discussing simple models.
AxIY
This will be developed further using the sub strand: Engage with science.
Science Video: Students are to engage with science in “real life” contexts. It involves students taking an interest in
http://practicalphysics.org/falling-through- science issues, participating in discussions about science and at times taking action.
water.html Learning Intentions or Intended Learning Outcomes
(What should the students achieve?)

WALT:
I am learning:

 What happens with objects when they are dropped into water.
 Make scientific predictions
 How to explain what happens when walking on custard

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 Science Unit/Lesson Planner
Topic: Understanding density and objects Context: Can you walk on custard?
Year/s: Year 3 / 4 Level/s: Level 1 and 2 Duration: 30 mins
Learning Activities
Pre-Activity: 5 minutes
Line up the plastic cups with water in each cup
Show the objects;
 Piece of wood
 small stone,
 post it note,
 a teaspoon on earth

Ask children what they think happens when these objects are dropped into a cup of water?

Discuss in pairs

Write up on board their ideas

Invite a child to become an assistant and drop an object into water.

After each object stop and talk about what happened? Was it what they thought would happen etc.?

Explain scientific words such as prediction, gravity and velocity

What is a prediction?
A statement about what will happen or might happen in the future. Is it a fact? No. it is what we think will happen.

What is Gravity? Is a force which tries to pull two objects toward each other? Anything which has mass also has a gravitational pull. The more massive an
object is, the stronger its gravitational pull is. Earth's gravity is what keeps you on the ground and what causes objects to fall.

An object falling through water reaches a constant terminal velocity after falling relatively small distances.

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 Science Unit/Lesson Planner
Topic: Understanding density and objects Context: Can you walk on custard?
Year/s: Year 3 / 4 Level/s: Level 1 and 2 Duration: 30 mins
Activity 1: 10 minutes
Predictions
What about humans (US)?
What happens when we enter a pool?
Can we walk on water?
Can we walk on mud / dirt?
Can we walk on paper?
Can we walk on wood?
Can we walk on sand?

Hand out 1;
Have groups answer make their predictions to the questions?

Write up on board their answers.

Activity 2: 15 minutes
Show a packet of Custard
Ask children to predict what will happen if we walked on custard.

Have children in pairs write their prediction on bottom of hand out 1.

I predict that _________________________ will happen.

Write up on board their predictions

I.e.
Sink %
Walk %
Break %
Bounce off %
Other suggestions taken from children

Watch video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN2D5y-AxIY

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 Science Unit/Lesson Planner
Topic: Understanding density and objects Context: Can you walk on custard?
Year/s: Year 3 / 4 Level/s: Level 1 and 2 Duration: 30 mins
Discuss what happens?
How did it happen?
Why did it happen?

Water and cornflour make a chemical reaction that hardens the substance. Therefore we’re able to walk on custard. Only if we keep moving as it becomes
like a trampoline. If we stop moving we will begin to sink.

Investigate further:
What other substances do you think we can walk on? Show picture of DEAD SEA. Why is this man floating when we sink in water?
Dead sea – we float in the dead sea because of the level of salt in the water. The more salt the more buoyant the water. Don’t enter if you have cuts as
burns.

Assessment Tasks
Diagnostic, Formative & Summative tasks
(How can their achievement be measured and recorded)
Diagnostic:
Address prior knowledge by asking initial questions on what they think happens when objects are dropped into a cup of water?

Formative:
 Physically demonstrate what happens when each object is dropped into water.
 Compare initial ideas with results

 Use knowledge and water experiments to make predictions using custard

 Report and then discuss predictions

Summative assessment procedures:

Prompting questions I’m going to ask to measure comprehension:
a) What is Gravity?
b) What is Terminal Velocity?
c) Why can we walk on custard?
d) Why can’t we walk on water?

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 Science Unit/Lesson Planner
Topic: Understanding density and objects Context: Can you walk on custard?
Year/s: Year 3 / 4 Level/s: Level 1 and 2 Duration: 30 mins

Dead Sea

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 Science Unit/Lesson Planner
Topic: Understanding density and objects Context: Can you walk on custard?
Year/s: Year 3 / 4 Level/s: Level 1 and 2 Duration: 30 mins

Teacher Information

Concepts
 An object that is light for its size compared with water will float in water.
 Usually an object with air trapped inside it will float.
 We can make a sinking object float by changing its shape to increase its volume.
 The combination of mass and volume (density) determines whether an object floats or sinks.

Density
 The relationship of its heaviness (mass) to its size (volume)
 Density is mass divided by volume
 If the object is less dense than water it will float lead balls foam balls

Calculating
 Density Water has a density of 1 gram per millilitre (1 g/mL).
 This is equal to 1000 kg/m3.
 Determine the density of an object by mass (in grams) volume (in mL)
 Objects that have a density less than 1 float.
 Objects that have a density greater than 1 sink.

Terminal velocity is the speed when a falling object is no longer getting faster. Velocity means how fast something is changing position in both speed and
direction.
Terminal velocity happens at the moment in time that the force, because of gravity, called weight, is the same as the opposite force of air resistance or friction.
In other words, terminal velocity is the point at which the velocity (speed of change of the falling object) is no longer getting greater. The gravitational force
minus the force of drag (or air resistance) equals zero.[1]
An object continues to fall steadily until air resistance becomes so great that it equals with the pull of gravity and the object can fall no faster.

Terminal velocity in the presence of buoyancy force

When the buoyancy effects are taken into account, an object falling through a fluid under its own weight can reach a terminal velocity (settling velocity) if the
net force acting on the object becomes zero. When the terminal velocity is reached the weight of the object is exactly balanced by the upward buoyancy
force and drag force.

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