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Welcome to the Sustainability Lesson Clearinghouse

Here, you can find free sustainability lessons to use in your class and upload your own lessons to share. Be sure to rate the lessons you use and leave comments for your colleagues!

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Sustainability Lesson Clearinghouse

Black and White Bottle Experiment

Lesson Description:
Students will be able to…
  • Explain the relationship between color and solar energy absorption and identify ways to use color to harness or repel the sun’s energy.
  • Organize and record data using a variety of graphic representations.

Lesson Type:
  • Other

Sustainability Topic:
  • Energy

GEF Program Category:
  • Green Energy Challenge

Time Needed:
50-60 minutes
Standards Addressed:
Science Standard 9: Understand the sources and properties of energy.
  • Benchmark # 1: Know that heat is often produced as a byproduct when one form of energy is converted to another form.
  • Benchmark # 3: Know that light can be reflected, refracted or absorbed.

Science Standard 12: Understand the nature of scientific inquiry.
  • Benchmark # 3: plan and conduct simple investigations.
  • Benchmark # 5: know that scientists’ explanations about what happens in the world come partly from what they observe and partly from how they interpret their observations.

Materials Needed:
  • one plastic bottle painted white
  • one plastic bottle painted black
  • several small balloons
  • "Black and White Experiment: Prediction, Directions, and Conclusions" worksheet provided below

School or Group:
Green Education Foundation (GEF)
Contact Email:
service@greeneducationfoundation.org
Lesson Documents:
application/pdf BlackandWhite_Sheet.pdf

The Sustainability Lesson Clearinghouse is brought to you in partnership with

Center for Green Schools