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Warm Balls, Better Bounce: Designing a Squash Ball Warmer Box

Grade 7 physical science: use bounce data and box tests to design a squash ball warmer powered by iron reacting with oxygen, and find why a sealed box failed.

Grade 7ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-PS1-6

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 7
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Circle the answer, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students use temperature and time data to judge warmer designs against stated criteria.
Students explain that the iron and oxygen reaction releases the thermal energy that warms the balls.
Students use evidence to explain why limiting oxygen changed how the device worked.

How to use

Have students underline the four criteria in paragraph 3 before they read Table 2, then let partners argue for a final design before writing the recommendation.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-PS1-6

Design and test a device that releases or absorbs thermal energy through a chemical process, such as a hand warmer.

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Name Date

Warm Balls, Better Bounce: Designing a Squash Ball Warmer Box

Test how many warmer packets and how much air a ball warmer needs.

Why warm the balls?

Read the passage and study Table 1. Then answer the questions.

A Cold Gym and a Dead Ball

1The sports science lab at Eastfield Middle School tests equipment for the school's teams: it times runners with light gates, measures how far softballs travel off different bats and records how balls bounce. This winter, Coach Lindiwe Dube of the squash club brought the lab a problem. A squash ball is a small, hollow rubber ball, and it bounces very little when it is cold. Players usually warm a ball by hitting it hard for several minutes. The club practices in an old gym that is often about 10 °C in winter, and warming up the balls takes much of each practice.

2Lab members Bao Nguyen and Adaeze Okonkwo first measured how temperature changes a ball's bounce. An adult warmed balls in water baths of different temperatures, dried them and checked each ball with an infrared thermometer. Bao dropped each ball from a height of 250 cm onto the gym floor, and Adaeze filmed the bounce next to a meter stick. Their averages are in Table 1.

3The team then designed a warmer: a small foam cooler that holds 4 balls and one or more air-activated warmer packets, the kind sold as hand warmers. Inside each packet, iron powder reacts with oxygen from the air and forms rust, and the reaction releases thermal energy. As oxygen atoms join the iron, a used packet becomes heavier than a new one. Coach Dube set four criteria. The balls must be at 40 °C or warmer by the 20-minute reading. They must never be above 50 °C, so they play like normal match balls. They must stay at 40 °C or warmer from the 20-minute reading through the 90-minute reading, the length of a practice. Packets cost $0.50 each, and the club can spend at most $1.50 per practice.

4For Test 1, the team drilled 6 small vent holes in the cooler's lid. They started each trial with the cooler, the balls and the packets all at 10 °C in the gym. They opened the packets, closed the lid and measured one ball's surface temperature every few minutes, opening the lid for only a moment each time. They tested 1, 2 and 3 packets (Table 2).