Energy and Matter Across Disciplines

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This task is a classroom-embedded transfer task focused on energy and matter flows in life and physical science systems. Prior to the class time recorded here, students had been considering energy within life science systems. To elicit evidence of how students’ understanding of energy and matter flow is evolving, this task asks students to transfer that understanding between life and physical science contexts by working with a group to 1) create and describe the mechanisms underlying their design of a Rube Goldberg machine, and 2) connect ideas and observations from both science domains to construct an argument for which organism is the most efficient source of energy for a human and why (connected back to the organism’s role within its ecosystem). The task includes both individual and group artifacts of student thinking. 

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