SuperSuit Investigation

Krista Gerhardt took an activity from the OOGEEP STEM teacher workshop she attended and made it her own! The STEM students in grades 4, 5, and 6 at Cleveland Elementary School participated in the petrochemical fabric testing, part of the Petrochemicals and Products unit. This unit helps students understand more about the many products made from oil and natural gas that are part of our everyday life. She explains how she presented this lesson to her class:

We started with a snippet of video from the movie "The Incredibles" to set the stage for our investigation. The scene shows the characteristics each family member's suit must contain to be considered as a new SUPER suit. The students were supercharged after viewing...then fabric sampling began! The procedure had the student teams making observations and recording those observations about each of the 5 fabric swatches. The teams then tested the fabric with water and recorded all observations. Repeating the procedure once again with the bleach, students recorded any and all observations. Based on the results of the investigation, student teams generated a pro/con list as to which fabrics would serve best as a new crime-fighting suit.

The next day, the class was split into 5 groups. Each group was assigned one of the 5 fabrics to report out their findings. What I like about this was that the 2nd-day groups contained students from different groups with different descriptions of what took place during the fabric investigation. This often resulted in rich discussion among the group members.

I made a 'note to self' for next year's lesson—I would like to expand the lab to include a mystery fabric. The students would have to use their data to identify the "unknown" based on the results of testing the known samples. I also like the idea of having multiple fabric samples of the same kind, just in different colors.

Overall, the students loved the lesson and were inspired to go home and check out their own wardrobe and the many synthetics that are derived from the use of petroleum!

Check out this products poster, part of the Petrochemicals and Products unit, to help your students understand that these products are all around them!