Students investigate how gas laws and heat transfer affect a diver’s air supply and body temperature while planning a realistic underwater mission. They use models, measurements, simple calculations, and prototype testing to answer the question of how to plan a safe dive that provides enough air and keeps divers warm underwater. Through feedback from Coast Guard or marine safety reviewers and connections to real marine environments, students revise their plans into a public dive-safety briefing and exhibit.

Students will model how heating and cooling change particle motion, spacing, and energy in solids, liquids, and gases, and explain how those changes affect pressure, volume, and temperature in scuba tanks and underwater gear. They will use measurements, graphs, and gas-law relationships to calculate air needs for a safe dive and use simple calorimetry to estimate how a warming device can reduce heat loss underwater. Students will develop, test, and revise a dive plan and warming-device prototype using feedback from a Coast Guard or marine safety review. They will communicate evidence clearly in a dive-safety briefing and interactive exhibit using calculations, particle models, safety procedures, and prototype results.

Students create a dive-safety briefing board that includes a rescue dive route map, safety checklist, air-supply calculations, and particle models showing how temperature and pressure affect gases in tanks and underwater. They also build and label a warming-device prototype, then test and revise it after feedback from a Coast Guard or marine safety review. Throughout the project, teams produce draft dive plans, graph and measurement records from gas-law and heat-transfer investigations, and short evidence summaries to support design decisions. For the final showcase, each team runs an interactive exhibit station with posters, prototypes, and demonstration models to explain their safe dive plan, warming solution, and science reasoning.

Turn the room into a Coast Guard operations center with a rescue alert, maps, dive gear, tank gauges, and cold-water scenario cards, then give teams a mission to plan a short emergency dive that has enough air and keeps a diver warm. Students rotate through quick hands-on stations where they compare compressed and uncompressed air, test how temperature changes affect a balloon or syringe model, and examine insulating materials in icy water to spark questions about gas laws and heat transfer. A Coast Guard or marine safety guest can open the mission with a short briefing on real dive risks and safety procedures, while an aquarium or maritime museum partner provides images or artifacts from local underwater environments to ground the scenario. Close with teams drafting first-notice ideas for air needs, safety steps, and warming-device concepts that they will revisit after critique and revision later in the project.

Host a Dive Safety Showcase where teams present to families, classmates, and a Coast Guard or marine safety guest using briefing boards, posters, and demo stations. Each team shares its dive route map, safety checklist, air-use calculations, particle models, and a labeled warming-device prototype, then gives a short dive-safety briefing that explains how gas laws guided its decisions. Invite a local aquarium or maritime museum educator to ask questions about underwater conditions and help visitors connect student solutions to real marine environments. Include a feedback round from the Coast Guard or marine safety reviewer so students can highlight how they revised their plans, air estimates, safety steps, and warming designs based on expert critique.