Science, Technology and Engineering: a skill companion

A small set of reusable sheets that grow one way of thinking about science at Year 10 depth: how a new technology lets science see what it could not see before, how new science leads to technologies and engineering, and how the two drive each other round and round. Print the scaffolds once and slot them into the science lessons you already teach.

What a skill companion is

Ideas about how science works are not a topic of their own. They grow inside the units a class teaches all year. So this pack is not a full term of lessons. It is three reusable scaffolds, a map of where they fit, and a short stand-alone lesson for teaching the idea first.

Start here: five minutes

1. Read the pairing map on the next page: it gives both directions of the cycle for each Year 10 topic.
2. Print the cycle mapper at the end of any topic, and the case study when a class studies the big bang.
3. Cut out the cards once. They are reused all year.
4. Open the free interactive unit on your board when you want a worked example.
5. Run the one-page mini-lesson first if you want to teach the idea before folding it into a topic.

The step up from Year 9

The descriptor is the same in Years 9 and 10; the depth is not. In Year 9 students followed one discovery from X-rays to medical scanners. In Year 10 they map both directions of the cycle in every topic, follow a case in which a communications antenna made a cosmological discovery that then set the design of three satellites, and build an instrument of their own.

Both directions of the cycle in every Year 10 topic

Technology and science push each other forward. This map gives, for each Year 10 topic, a technology that moved the science on and a piece of science that led to a technology or a piece of engineering.

The three moves, and the picture that backs each one

When you want a worked example on the board, open the interactive unit and use the picture that matches the move.

• Follow better instruments to deeper science: “Better instruments, deeper science”.
• Find science that became technology: “Examples of science contributing to technology”.
• Weigh the trade-offs in engineering an instrument: “Designing an instrument to study the universe”.

Technology to science, science to technology

For each topic, name a technology that let the science move forward, and a piece of science that led to a technology or a piece of engineering. The first row is done for you.

From a hiss in an antenna to a map of the early universe

A faint glow left from the hot early universe fills all of space, but it is far too cold to see: it arrives as microwaves. It was found by engineers testing a communications antenna, and then measured by satellites built for nothing else.

Questions

Which advance did each technology make possible?

Cut out the twelve cards. Six name a technology; six describe an advance in science. Pair each technology with the advance it made possible. Then, for any two pairs, say how the new science later fed back into technology.

Teacher note: the answer sheet lists the pairs and a way each fed back into technology.

Build an instrument, see something new

A diffraction grating spreads light into its colours. Fixed to a cardboard tube with a narrow slit at the other end, it makes a spectroscope. Through it, an old-style hot-filament globe shows a smooth rainbow, while a fluorescent tube shows bright separate lines. The same kind of instrument, made far more precise, showed what the Sun and distant stars are made of, and the science of those lines in turn led to fluorescent lamps, LEDs and lasers.

We are learning to

• explain how a new instrument lets science observe what it could not before,
• explain how new science leads to new technology,
• describe the cycle in which each drives the other.

Success criteria

• I can describe the difference between a smooth spectrum and a line spectrum, and what lines tell a scientist.
• I can trace one complete loop from an instrument to new science and back to a technology.

You need

• for each pair: a cardboard tube, a small square of diffraction grating, black card, tape and scissors; in the room, a fluorescent light, a filament or halogen globe if you have one, and an LED torch,
• the cycle mapper and case study (scaffolds 1 and 2), and the cards from scaffold 3, one set per table. Never look at the Sun, through the tube or without it.

Lesson flow (about 30 minutes)

Running it shorter? Build the spectroscopes ahead of time, and spend the lesson looking and closing the loop.

Watch for these ideas

• Seeing technology as only applied science: often the instrument came first and the science followed.
• Treating engineers and scientists as working apart rather than depending on each other.
• Thinking the colours are made by the grating rather than separated from the light.

Make it easier, make it bigger

• Easier: build one spectroscope for each table ahead of time and focus on the loop.
• Bigger: tape a paper scale inside the tube and compare the line positions from two different fluorescent lights.

Answers and look-fors

The next sheet has model rows for the cycle mapper, the case study answered, the card pairs, and a quick three-level guide.

Answers and look-fors

Cycle mapper (rows 2 to 5)

A loop back: data loggers measured rates precisely, which improved catalysts, which made catalytic converters; testing converters needed new gas sensors. Engineers need the science to know what is possible; scientists need engineers to build instruments that can measure it.

Case study

Technology enabled the science when a horn antenna built for satellite communication picked up the glow. Science shaped technology when COBE, WMAP and Planck were designed for the sole job of measuring it, each more finely than the last. Penzias and Wilson cleaned the antenna to rule out a fault in their own equipment before believing the signal came from the sky. In space, a satellite escapes the atmosphere, which absorbs and adds microwaves, and can scan the whole sky. The case shows a prediction (1948) waiting for technology, and a lucky find (1964) that mattered because a prediction was ready to explain it.

Technology and discovery cards (pairs)

A quick three-level guide

In the mini-lesson, a filament globe and most LEDs give a continuous spectrum; a fluorescent tube gives bright lines from the mercury vapour inside it. Helium was named from lines in the Sun’s spectrum in 1868, decades before it was found on Earth.