Outstanding demonstration

High school students struggle to understand the triple point of water because it is normally introduced in an abstract manner. This demonstration provide a way for educators to show students... See More

High school students struggle to understand the triple point of water because it is normally introduced in an abstract manner. This demonstration provide a way for educators to show students this phenomena in real life. In addition, the demonstration allows teachers to show students how substances behave under different pressures. This would be an excellent for both physics and chemistry classes. In fact, one could even use it in an Earth Science class to model the atmospheric pressure on different celestial bodies and show the state in which water would be.

Discrepant event that leads to questions

This article describes using a vacuum pump and a few drops of water to show the triple point of water, to start students thinking about how substances act differently under different pressur... See More

This article describes using a vacuum pump and a few drops of water to show the triple point of water, to start students thinking about how substances act differently under different pressure conditions. The author does a wonderful job of describing the set-up of this demonstration but does not provide many suggestions for follow-up, leaving that up to the individual instructors.