8th Grade Science: Synthetic Materials

The students chose a synthetic material to investigate to gather and make sense of information to describe that synthetic materials come from natural resources and impact society.  They described how the synthetic materials are made from natural resources, how synthetic materials are made by chemically changing the starting substances to create a material with different characteristics, how some examples of synthetic materials are plastics, medicines, and new fuels, how a synthetic substance may be chemically identical to a naturally-occurring substance or may be different, how making and using synthetic materials have both positive and negative impacts on society. They performed an in-class investigation modeling the proper research method, making a synthetic material in the lab (gel worm), and then applying their knowledge by creating either an advertisement, short video, poster, or article of their own product and demonstrating mastery of the information by presenting it to the class.