Design Of A Guided Inquiry Classroom Activity To Investigate Effects Of Chemistry On Physical Properties Of Elastomers

Typical organization of science and mathematics K12 education divides subjects into discrete courses. However, science and engineering are highly interdisciplinary fields. To better equip students to engage in the interdisciplinary nature of real-world STEM research and practice, projects can be used to highlight the interconnectivity of core subjects. Here, we present an exploratory, guided inquiry classroom research project. This work details student-led experiments combining physics and chemistry principles to fabricate silicone bouncy balls and analyze resulting mechanochemical relationships in these elastomeric materials. In this project, students embodied researchers to uncover foundational relationships among chemistry, physics, and mathematics. To do this, students used silicone kits to design an array of polymer formulations resulting in bouncy balls of varying stiffnesses. Students aimed to answer a physics-based research question using chemistry and mathematics. The resulting data was used to discuss the effect of polymer chemistry on the behavior of the bouncy balls. This exercise serves to combine hands-on fabrication methods with quantitative analysis, using experimental methods of varying costs and complexities that can be tailored to instructor time and budget. The project presented here is appropriate for upper-level high school students or first-year undergraduates. The pedagogical goal of the work is to empower students to realize and use connections between chemistry, physics, polymer science, and engineering to understand the process of material design and selection.