Work on your own to answer the following questions. Record your answers in your technology notebook.
The miniature events modeled something about a real-life event. Choose one of the miniature events and describe how it relates to the real-life event.
Did the investigation using miniature events make you think of questions you have about natural events? Write any questions that you have.
Each miniature event was a model for a real-life event. Scientists often use models in their work. Why do you think models help scientists learn more about natural events?
Answers to Reflect and Connect
Allow students time to answer these questions. Once they have had time to complete their responses, you may want to hold a class discussion on some or all of them.
The miniature events modeled something about a real-life event. Choose one of the miniature events and describe how it relates to the real-life event.
Did the investigation using miniature events make you think of questions you have about natural events? Write any questions that you have.
- Each miniature event was a model for a real-life event. Scientists often use models in their work. Why do you think models help scientists learn more about natural events?
This question helps students begin to make the transition between what they explored in this activity and the information about real-life events that they will read about in the Explain activity, Presenting Events. When they complete the Explain activity, they will have more complete explanations. For now, they may simply say that fires go out if there is not enough air or that the tornado bottles are a little like tornadoes because of the swirling.
This is a chance for students to think about natural events. They may now have questions about why events occur or what makes some events larger or more extreme than others. Because this is an Explore activity, they may have more questions than answers—but that is fine at this point. As they move forward in this chapter, many of their questions are likely to be answered. In the Explain activity, they will learn more about each type of event modeled in miniature in this Explore activity.
Models can help scientists because the scientists can control all the parts of the model and how they interact. Scientists can vary one part of the system to see what effect that change has on the overall event. For example, in station 1 (fires), students used two different-sized containers over the burning candle. The size of the container (amount of air available to the fire) was the variable that the students could change to see how that affected the burning of the candle.