Give your class a colorful and tasty representation of the components of the mixture that we call air. Pop a few batches of popcorn in four different colors, one to represent each gas: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, and carbon dioxide. The unit that this instructional activity is part of contains lessons and additional resources that can be used with primary scientists; however, the concepts relating to different gases may be difficult for them to grasp. They would need to have some understanding of different elements and compounds to fully benefit from the demonstration.

Concepts

air, mixtures, the atmosphere

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Additional Tags

mixture, air, atmosphere, science

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Pros

• A richly detailed lesson plan includes narrative and an instructional video, and leaves you well-prepared
• A projection slide, which is available in Spanish and in English, helps learners to understand the relative amounts of popcorn in the mixture model
• Literature and math links are provided

Cons

• You may find that preparing batches of colored popcorn is too time consuming for the short amount of time that it will be used; consider simply using marbles or, as mentioned in the Setup portion, small crumpled pieces of different-colored paper