In order to survive, people need to drink water. However, 1 out of 9 people in the world don’t have clean water to drink. This is because we need a lot of expensive and fancy technology to clean water and a lot of places in the world just can’t afford that. When we drink dirty water, a lot of bad things can happen; we can get super sick or even die!
One cheap way to clean water is through using filters, which works at getting bigger stuff out of water. But sometimes, there are things in the water called nanoparticles—really small (smaller than we can even see with a microscope) things that can also make us sick if we drink water with them in it. So, in this case, instead of building filters for smaller nanoparticles, which can get expensive, we can make our nanoparticles stick together and get caught by a filter more easily! It turns out that if we add salt to water with nanoparticles in it, the nanoparticles will stick together more easily. Let’s see if we can stick some nanoparticles together!
The student handout will be given to all students working on the design challenge. It gives a brief recap of the story, it helps the students identify what they are attempting to achieve, and it recaps the design process.
Clumping Nanoparticles TEK8 Instructor’s Guide
This Instructor’s Guide provides the instructor additional information on how to run the design challenge with alternatives for materials and test setups as well as information to help make the design challenge a good educational experience.
The Telling the Story Video conveys the societal impact of the student’s research that is the basis for the design challenge and will set the problem-solving context for students.
The Design Challenge Video leads students through the design process. It indicates materials available, states what the criteria are for success and any constraints. It also gives a second ‘level’ of the design challenge that allows ‘early completers’ to move on to a slightly more difficult challenge.
The presentation can be used in conjunction or in place of the Design Challenge Video.