Students investigate the essential question, “How can hands-on investigations help us predict, measure, and explain chemical reactions?” Beginning with bath bombs, teams conduct safe investigations and create models to explore matter properties, atom and energy conservation, food reactions, thermal transfer, and endothermic and exothermic processes. With input from a water utility professional and an FLC chemistry professor, teams apply engineering design principles to construct, test, and improve a device that releases or absorbs thermal energy through a chemical reaction. Students track progress in notebooks, use peer and teacher critique to revise their plans and models, and present demonstrations and displays at a Reaction Roadshow for other classes and community partners.

Students will safely investigate bath-bomb and other reactions, using property and temperature data to identify chemical change and distinguish endothermic from exothermic processes. They will create and revise particle models explaining atom, mass, and energy conservation, including how food molecules are rearranged to support growth and release energy. Teams will plan controlled investigations and apply engineering design principles to construct, test, and improve a device that uses a chemical reaction to absorb or release thermal energy. Students will track progress in notebooks, use peer, teacher, and community-partner feedback to revise their work, and clearly present evidence-based demonstrations at the Reaction Roadshow.

Students will maintain investigation binders with safety plans, property and temperature data, mass and energy analyses, progress reflections, and particle models explaining bath-bomb and other reactions. Teams will use teacher, peer, and community-partner feedback to revise investigation plans, models, and design sketches. Each team will engineer, test, and improve a safe device that uses an endothermic or exothermic chemical process while demonstrating conservation of mass and energy. For the Reaction Roadshow, teams will create and lead a short demonstration and display that uses evidence to answer how hands-on investigations help us predict, measure, and explain chemical reactions.

Teams examine a teacher-approved bath bomb, predict what will happen in water, and then observe it fizz in an open container while wearing goggles and following lab-safety routines. They record temperature, mass, bubbles, and changes in properties, then create an initial particle model to explain whether a reaction occurred and where matter and energy went. Students compare evidence and revise their models through peer feedback, tracking questions and progress in science notebooks around the essential question, “How can hands-on investigations help us predict, measure, and explain chemical reactions?” Conclude by introducing the challenge to engineer, test, and improve a safe endothermic or exothermic device for the Reaction Roadshow and invited chemistry and utilities partners.

Host a Reaction Roadshow where teams lead safe, short demonstrations of their engineered endothermic or exothermic devices for other classes, families, and invited water-utility professionals and chemistry professors. Each display should include before-and-after property and temperature data, particle models showing conservation of mass and energy, and an explanation of how evidence answers the essential question. Students should highlight prototype failures, binder or notebook reflections, peer and teacher feedback, and revisions that improved safety and performance. Visitors can test predictions, ask questions, and provide feedback using a simple “evidence, clarity, next step” card.