Taming the river

In this lesson, students look at an event from the history of London floods to set a context for the science knowledge and understanding.  They undertake an initial measurement and calculation of the mass of water and how this scales up to appreciate the ‘heaviness’ of water.

Learning outcomes:

• Students must describe impacts and costs of the River Thames flooding on London and measure and record the volume and corresponding mass of samples of water.
• They should explain and correctly use the terms mass and weight and corresponding common units with simple examples, scale a measured volume and mass of water to calculate the mass of 1m³ and recognise that water is very ‘heavy’.
• Students could scale the calculation of mass of water to any volume; perform similar calculations for other fluids and, in particular, for the mass of air.

This lesson is part of a full unit, covering the topics of pressure in liquids and gases and simple machines from the key stage 3 science curriculum,  which can be found here