Looking for some physical and chemical changes examples and ideas for your lesson? I tell you what, physical science is truly growing on me! Science is SO awesome! I’d love to share an inquiry-based approach with you to teach this amazing topic!
What Is the Main Difference Between Chemical and Physical Changes?
Matter can undergo both physical and chemical changes.
A physical change is when matter changes in size, shape, or state of matter, but doesn’t change the matter’s composition. The form of matter changes, but the substance is not transformed into another.
Examples of physical changes include crumpled paper, water freezing, pounding metal into sheets, breaking glass, and filtering solid from liquid.
A chemical change is when a substance chemically reacts to form one or more different substances. It’s a change in matter that changes and creates one more new substances.
Examples of chemical changes include burning hydrogen gas in the air, rusting of metals, cooking cake, digesting food, and fermentation.
Summary: Chemical changes create new substances, whereas physical changes do not.
How To Introduce Physical and Chemical Changes Examples
The longer I teach, the more I realize the importance of hooking students into the content and taking an inquiry-based approach to teaching content. Students have got to have the opportunity to get excited about what they are learning and have the opportunity to wonder before the information is dumped in their lap.
Here are three ideas that can be used to introduce this middle school chemistry topic. They can all be used or just choose one or two!
Lion Statue Phenomena
One way to get students wondering is to show them real-life phenomena and see if they can explain what is going on.
There is a statue outside of the Art Institute of Chicago that has a greenish tint. This is due to a green patina, which is caused by an outside layer of oxidized copper.
Show students a picture of this lion, without telling them what is going on, and give them a chance to brainstorm what has occurred. They may think it’s painted. They may think it’s some type of mold. Your students will come up with all types of causes for this effect.
Give students about 5 minutes to discuss with a partner or group to come up with some ideas. They can verbally tell you these ideas or you can have them fill in a graphic organizer such as a cause/effect flow chart or bubble map brainstorm.
Don’t tell them what happened yet! Revisit this at the end of the unit!
Elephant Toothpaste Demonstration
Something else you can do to get your students thinking is to show them an elephant toothpaste demonstration. This is a chemical reaction that creates an awesome oozing foam explosion!
You’ll need:
- food coloring
- dish soap (liquid)
- 6% hydrogen peroxide
- a packet of yeast
- a cup
- a spoon
- a empty 16 oz bottle
- a funnel
- water
- safety goggles
- a lab coat or apron
- a tarp or trash bag to reduce mess
- rubber gloves
What next? Here’s a nice video that is a great demonstration of what will happen.
Directions:
- Put on your safety equipment.
- Pour 100 mL of the hydrogen peroxide into the bottle.
- Add around 5 mL of liquid dish soap (a few squirts) into the bottle with the hydrogen peroxide.
- Add some food coloring, your choice, to the bottle as well!
- In a separate cup, mix the yeast and 4 tablespoons of water together.
- Lastly, pour around the yeast and water mix (catalyst) into the bottle, and watch what happens!
Now it’s time to get your students to wonder. What just happened? How did a bunch of liquids just cause an explosion? What made the change?
Don’t tell them about physical and chemical changes yet. This is all about inquiry and wondering.
Baking Soda and Vinegar
Don’t have the time and resources to create elephant toothpaste? You can just mix soda and vinegar together to get the same point across and ask the same questions. This is an experiment that the students can easily do as well, whereas the elephant toothpaste would better serve as a demonstration.
You can just mix these two ingredients into a graduated cylinder, or you can do an experiment that will expand a balloon due to the reaction. Either way, still don’t tell your students what happened. Let them wonder and revisit it later!
Amazing Lesson – Physical Change and Chemical Change with Examples
After you have your students excited about this unit and have them wondering what in the world happened in your demonstrations, it’s now time to answer some of their questions.
Let them know that what they have witnessed have been chemical changes, where new substances are made, but there is also something called physical changes where a change occurs, but no new substances are created.
Then it’s time to teach! This can be done using a lesson that you already have on hand or, don’t have one or want something different? This physical changes and chemical changes digital interactive lesson is perfect for explaining this complicated topic without overwhelming students. This lesson does define physical change and chemical change with examples.
Interactive lessons focus on reducing cognitive load so students understand and retain science content better. This lesson uses one of the strategies that help students retain content better by chunking the content.
When content is chunked, students are able to categorize the information better in their brains and are able to apply it at a faster rate.
This physical and chemical change middle school science lesson explains physical changes vs chemical changes examples, physical and chemical changes definitions, chemical reactions, reactants and products, chemical equations, the Law of Conservation of Mass, evidence of chemical reactions, matter, and more!
After each “chunk” of information, there are interactive activities in which students can apply the knowledge gained. This includes drag-and-drop activities, typing activities, highlighting, and more!
If you haven’t taught about physical and chemical properties yet, there is a lesson that you can use to cover this as well.
Exploring Examples of Physical Changes and Chemical Changes in Everyday Life
Now, your students have had a chance to wonder about these changes, learn about these changes, and now it’s time to explore some everyday examples of these changes and apply what they have learned.
What better way to do this than to use stations!
You can set your room up into 6 stations with the following materials:
- salt and water mixture
- rusted nails
- a browned apple or banana
- Oobleck
- baking soda and vinegar
- crumpled paper
Give students a handout that will have them to answer the questions:
- Is this a physical or chemical change?
- What evidence do you have of this?
You can expand upon this, but these are the main things that students should determine. Give students around 4-5 minutes per station and see what they know!
Add more questions such as:
- What are 3 examples of physical change?
- What are 3 examples of chemical change?
- What was the most challenging station? Why?
- What do physical and chemical changes have in common?
- How do chemical changes affect our everyday life?
Enjoy!
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