Electric Lemon
Grades 2nd-3rd
General Objective:
Describe the weather conditions.
Lesson Objective: Students will have a better understanding of lightning.
Motivator: Read the book Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco, an author from Michigan.
Materials:
- Book- Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco
- Fresh lemons- one for every two students
- Clean, short piece of bare copper wire
Procedure:
- Have the students straighten a paper clip and stick one end into a lemon, through the rind into the pulp.
- Now have them take a piece of copper wire about as long as the paper clip and poke it into the lemon (through the rind, into the pulp) about 2 cm away from the paper clip.
- Bend the free end of the wire close to the free end of the paper clip.
- Now have the students touch both ends to their tongue several times.
- Ask the question: "Can you feel a slight tingle?"
- Explain to them that the tingle is electricity.
- Have the students discuss how this is the same as lightning and write a short summery on what they experience and what happened. Make sure that they relate that lightning is just electricity in the sky.
Teaching Strategies: Discussion, investigation/inquiry, and guided discovery
Vocabulary:
- Lightning: electricity in the sky
- Electricity: a current used as a source of power
Assessment: Look at write up, performance tasks, and discussion. Individual Assessment.
Teaching and Learning Process: Inference, prediction, recording, and formulating hypothesis.
Extensions:
- As a class you could make Thunder Cake from the recipe in the back of the book Thunder Cake.
- Plan a lesson on teaching the students how to determine how far away a thunderstorm is by counting the seconds between the thunder and the lightning.
- Have the students look up the web site: http://www.whnt19.com/kidwx/lightnin.htm
Have them in, groups, write up a short report on the information that they find in the sight.
Resources:
Bosak, S. Science is… Scholastic Canada Ltd. 1991
Polacco, P. Thunder Cake. Paper Star. 1997