Keeping it Cool

Challenge
Last month the challenge was trying to keep things warm, but this month the challenge is going to try to keep things cold! The weather sure does change a lot in New York from cold and freezing to above freezing and sunny during the winter. When it was snowy, you might have built a snowman, but now it might have melted. What if you wanted to keep it around? Do you think you’d be allowed to put it in the freezer? We are not going to try and build a large enough freezer for a snowman, but a cooler that will keep ice or snow from melting for a period of time if you brought it inside.

Your cooler does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your design. You are only allowed to use a certain amount of materials per group noted in the list. The cooler has to be one that is easy to open to get the snow or ice out.  

Materials

• same size ice cube or amount of snow
• 1-foot masking tape
• 24x12 inch aluminum foil piece
• 12x12 felt piece
• 5 rubber bands
• 5-feet string piece
• 1 sheet copy paper
• 1-gallon Ziploc bag
• 1-pint Ziploc bag
• handful of Styrofoam packing peanuts
• 4 foam plates/trays
• 10 paper clips
• 10 craft sticks

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Hints and Tips for Success

1. Allow students planning and discussion time by having them experiment with the items to see how flexible and movable they are. Students could test out materials by placing snow or ice cube in each to see how long it lasts with the individual item.
2. After experimenting, allow student groups to plan their final design. Include as many ways to improve their contraption as needed.
3. For differentiation, adjust the amount of materials available and allowed to use, add any additional materials. Adjustments could be made to make it more challenging or simpler.
4. Make sure to be using about the same size ice cubes and amounts of snow. Place all coolers in the same area for fair testing. Designate a specific amount of time to wait before opening containers (1-2 hours is the average time).
5. Discuss properties of each material and ask students to think about the different coolers they might have seen to try and emulate those.
6. Connect to science by discussing solids and liquids, reversible and irreversible changes with solids and liquids, freezing/melting points, thermometers, Fahrenheit, and/or Celsius.
7. Connect to ELA by reading The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, where the main character, Peter, puts snow in his pocket but it isn’t there in the morning. Nonfiction books about freezing and melting would fit well with this concept as well.