Melting glaciers continued......
What questions do I have about this inquiry experience?
#1 Did anyone else have a hard time copying and pasting the Melting Iceberg activity into a word document? I tried several times and it was all squirrely with lots of extra question marks.
#2 How much background knowledge would the students have or be given before they began? The "exhibits curiosity" section seems to require a hefty amount of prior knowledge.
#3 I enjoyed the experiment and tried several times to prove my hunch wrong, but the melting ice would never run over the edges. I was pleased that with my limited knowledge my hypothesis was correct; however, I am afraid, based on the results of the experiment, the students may come to a wrong assumption about the melting issues at hand. From what I read, the floating icebergs are not the problem. The glaciers covering land masses are what would cause the rise in the sea level. The experiment does not touch on that at all. Is that something we hope the students gain from their inquiry?
#4 I read all of the references we were given and did not find enough information to support a position on global warming. I even googled a little and did not find as much as I needed. I will try again, but how would we assure that our students found legitimate sources to support their stance?
Depending on how you perform the experiment, you can actually cover the idea of the ice over land. When I performed the lab, I had a large chunk of ice that was resting on the bottom of the bowl, and my water overflowed. So, depending on how you read and interpret the directions of the lab, you can actually have very different results.
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