Science
Transport offers many obvious links with science. Some are outlined below.
- A. Air quality assessment using several locations around the school. Simple tests to collect small particles of air-borne soot (PARTICULATES) Equipment- filter paper ina plastic funnel placed over a bottle. After rain particulates will collect on the filter paper. Oven-dry the paper and brush of the particles. Examine them under a microscope or magnifying glass. Speculate on what might have cause these to be deposited in the air.
- Use strips of masking tape on a card and place outdoors. Use one strip for each day. The card can swing from a tree or nail. It might also be attached to a stake and placed in the ground. Remove one strip each day. At the end of the week compare the coverage for all the days. The place where the first strip was removed should have the most soot and other particulates.
- Double sided tape can also be placed around lamp posts and trees. Remove the tape after a week. Examine the sticky surface for evidence.
- B. Noise – study the areas of the school that are the most noisy environments to be in due to noise pollution from transport. Consider ways of reducing noise pollution-wooden fences, insulation etc. . Make sound mufflers. Test them.
- C. Slopes - study forces and slopes . Consider how to make a model sloped roadway. Find ways of using friction to reduce the speed of toy cars which are moving down the slop. Learn about varieties of slope. Link to geography and the study of hills and mountains.
- D. Bridges - what ways are bridges constructed? What kind of design might take the heaviest load? Design and make a bridge.
History
Children can study the development of modes of transport at different times in the past. Here children could examine how animals were used as a the main means of transport at one time, that wheels were invented and used to form the first carts, that trains in the past were powered by coal as fuel etc. They might make a study of bicycles now and in the past, of coach lights at different times or examine how road surfaces varied in different places in the past.
The material in the Transport History section for this age level on the Ask About Ireland site allows the teacher to develop the theme of transport through time. It also allows the planning of an integrated approach to SESE.