Students will launch the driving question through a combustion demonstration, investigate how cellular respiration compares to combustion, and conduct authentic user research with chemists and potential exhibit audiences. They will build foundational understanding of reaction types and energy transfer while developing empathy maps and interview artifacts that will guide later design decisions.

Students will synthesize user research, lab evidence, and core chemistry concepts to define a precise, evidence-based problem statement that will guide the design of their interactive exhibit explaining why respiration does not produce flames.

Students will generate, critique, and refine multiple exhibit concepts that explain why cellular respiration—though chemically similar to combustion—does not produce flames. Through structured brainstorming, scientific modeling, and user-centered design tools, they will move from divergent idea generation to selected, criteria-aligned exhibit concepts grounded in kinetics, thermochemistry, equilibrium, and redox chemistry.

Students will build and refine testable versions of their interactive exhibits explaining why cellular respiration does not produce flames. Through modeling workshops, structured prototyping sessions, peer critique, and expert feedback from Pfizer chemists, teams will iterate on physical models, kinetics demonstrations, thermochemistry visuals, and buffer simulations while documenting revisions for their final showcase.

Students will test their interactive cellular respiration exhibits with authentic users, refine their scientific models and explanations based on expert and peer feedback, and present their final work to community chemists and invited guests at a public showcase answering the essential question: If respiration is a combustion reaction, how come we don’t breathe fire?