Careers in Science: Robin Zevotek

This resource supports students understandings of common chemicals found around the home and classroom, including the hazards of common chemicals. Students learn how chemicals can look like candy, drinks, and household items. This resource supports the understanding of home safety, drug and chemical safety, marketing and packaging. This is also a useful resource to support critical thinking and careful observation. It can be used in the classroom, or in afterschool programs. "Household Item and Chemical Look-a-Like Possibilities" Awareness Chart can be sent home to Parents as well as posted in the classroom.

Using the data from two burns in the fire science lab, students will make conclusions about the impact of ventilation on a fire. Students will present their claims based on the evidence presented in the graphs and learn why this skill is critical for both firefighters and the women and men investigating the fire’s origin and cause. This dataset offers an opportunity to practice interpreting real-world data from graphs and communicating a claim based on evidence and reasoning.

Two interactive virtual tests simulate the way that hoverboards, including their battery packs, are tested in the UL lab. In the overcharge test, students choose a charger for a hoverboard and see a thermal image of the hoverboard interior once the chosen charger is plugged in. In the drop test, a hoverboard is dropped from a selected height, observed for damage, then put into a test run to look for overheating due to the damage. Both tests can be done multiple times using different variables. This virtual test is included in the full module or can be used separately to demonstrate the way products containing li-ion batteries are tests, and/or observing tests using different variables to determine safety outcomes.

This video demonstrate the way that lithium-ion batteries are tested to the extreme in the UL battery labs including: the crush test, blunted nail test, projectile test, and abusive overcharge test. Click on the test image to play the video. The videos is included in the full module or can be used separately from the module to show how batteries are tested in the UL labs to understand the extremes batteries can be taken to before posing a risk to consumers.

A challenge for students to create a public service announcement about lithium-ion battery safety. Students are asked to post their PSA on the site to share with students around the world. The challenge can be used as a summative assessment of the PEP module and/or as an opportunity for students to communicate battery safety to students their age.