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Stars, Fire, and Candy
By: Jessica West
Engage
To engage students learning, the teacher
will do a demo. This demo involves lighting
a candle and allowing the students to
observe its flame. While students are
observing, the teacher will ask the students
questions such as…
What colors do you see in the flame?
Which colors of the flame do you think are
hotter?
Which colors of the flame do you think are
colder?
Doing this allows students to be introduced
to the concept of heat and color being
directly related when it comes to stars.
Explore
During this part of the lesson, students will explore the different
types of stars while also exploring the science concepts involved in
making rock candy. Around the room there will be 4 different
stations. They are as follows:
Yellow
Red
Blue
White
At each of the stations students will make a different colored rock
candy star based on the picture and description of the star given.
While doing this they will also be writing down on a worksheet what
the star looks like, its temperature, and an example of that star.
After making the rock candy they will have to wait 3 or 4 days for the
crystals to form. As they form the teacher will discuss why the crystals
form.
Rock Candy Continued...
Station 1: Yellow (SUN)
At this station there will be pictures of yellow stars followed by a description. For example:
Our own Sun is classified as a yellow dwarf star. It has a surface temperature of about 5,800 Kelvin causing most of the light we see to be
yellow.
Station 2: Red (Garnet Sidus & alpha Tauri)
Again there will be pictures of red stars. Example:
The most common stars in the Universe are the tiny red dwarf stars. These stars have a surface temperature of less than 3,500 Kelvin, and
this is why they appear red to our eyes. This color is also seen in red giant stars which are larger in size and they are still colder.
Station 3: Blue (Sirius & Vega)
At this station there will be pictures of blue stars. Example:
The hottest stars are the blue stars. These start at temperatures of about 10,000 Kelvin, and the biggest, hottest blue supergiants can be
more than 40,000 Kelvin. In fact, there’s so much energy coming off the surface of a blue star that many could actually be classified as
ultraviolet stars, it’s just that our eyes can’t see that high into the spectrum.
Station 4: White (Sirius B & IK Pegasi B)
At this station there will be a picture of a white stars . Example:
•A white dwarf is a small, very dense, hot star. When a star has just become a white dwarf, it is hotter than 100,000 K (about 180,000 F). It
then gradually cools then after many billions of years, it can become cooler than the Sun (which is about 6,000 K).
The Science Behind Rock Candy
Dissolving the sugar in the hot solution (water) and then allowing it to cool creates what's called a
supersaturated solution When this happens, the solution is unstable, meaning that it has more sugar
in it than can actually stay in the liquid.
Molecule by molecule, sugar crystals in the solution will attach themselves to the sugary string the
crystals you put on the string when you soaked it essentially serve as starting points and are known as
seed crystals.
As time goes by, the water evaporates very slowly from the solution , so sugar molecules continue to
come out of the remaining solution and move onto the seed crystals on the string. Sugar molecules
have a particular shape; they don't, for example, look like snow or diamond crystals.
After millions of them layer onto the string, their shape will take a certain form. Even with the sugar
growing at the rate of millions of molecules per hour, it'll take a day for your crystals to be visible and a
week for them to use up all the sugar they can from the solution. In the end, the finished piece of rock
candy will be made of about a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) molecules attached to the string.
Explain
After their worksheets are completed, students will come
together as a whole while the teacher explains the
Hertzsprung-Russel Diagram and how stars are classified.
The teacher will talk about which class stars belong to
based on their temperature and color.
Teaching Tips…
How are the stars classified?
Stars are actually classified
based on their color,
temperature, luminosity, spectral
type, and evolutionary stage.
As the diagram shows Blue stars
are the hottest, followed by
white, yellow, orange, and then
red.
Luminosity (L) is a measure of
how many times brighter or
dimmer a star is compared with
the sun. As seen from the
diagram white dwarfs have the
lowest luminosity and blue
giants and red super-giants have
the highest luminosity.
Stars are not always one type.
They move through a life cycle.
Evaluate
Students will be evaluated through group work. Each group will be
given a set of pictures of stars. Students will have to put the stars in
order of increasing temperature based on what they have learned
from the lesson. The rubric will be as follows:
3 = Correct
2 = Partially Correct
1 =Incorrect
Extend
During this part of the lesson, students
will be given an article about a specific
star. Students will write up a one
paragraph summary describing the star.
The rubric for the paragraph is as
follows:
+
Excellent
Good
The summary will include…
•Stars Name
•Color
•Temperature
• Interesting Fact
X
Needs Improvement
Resources for articles:
1.
http://www.sciencenews
forkids.org/articles/2009
0401/Feature1.asp
2.
http://kids.yahoo.com/s
cience/space/article/sta
r
Resources
Star Information:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/stars/startypes.sh
tml
Rock candy:
http://candy.about.com/od/hardcandyrecipes/r/rock_candy.htm
Flame Activity
http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Lessons/Science/Space_Sciences/SPA0007.
html
Color of a star song:
http://www.kidsknowit.com/educational-songs/play-educationalsong.php?song=The%20Color%20of%20A%20Star
Reflections
Reflections
Reflections
Overall the lesson went great. More time would have
been great as usual. The students seemed really
excited about the lesson and loved the rock candy!
Taking the time to prepare the lesson and then
actually do it in the classroom was a great experience
and really helped me see what I needed to fix.
I presented this lesson at Pine Island Elementary School on March 23rd In Mrs. Schultz’s 3rd grade classroom and
finished it on March 26th.
Overall the lesson went great. We had time for everything except for the extend part of my lesson. The rock candy was
messy but the kids had a lot of fun making it. It was great to see all the work I put into my lesson really come alive and
to see the kids so interested in it.
We started the rock candy on Monday and ate it on Thursday after discussing what had happened.
Did You Know…
About 90 percent of all stars are main sequence stars and most of these are small red
stars.
In the constellation Scorpius is the supergiant star Anatres which is 300 times the
suns diameter and 11,000 times brighter than the sun. This is the 16th brightest star in
the sky.
Stars evolve over time..