A Sunken Ship. Each module focuses on a topic in the life, earth, or physical sciences. Each module consists of a student book and a teacher's guide. In the module A Sunken Ship, students are involved in a simulation about salvaging the cargo on board a mythical ship that sank in the Atlantic Ocean 50 years ago.
Students first use plastic soda bottles to make models of the ocean where the ship sank.
They investigate the compressibility of gases and the noncompressibility of liquids to determine the fate of fuel barrels that were on board the ship. They observe the effect of immersion in saltwater on copper, steel, and silver. They refer to the financial pages from a newspaper to calculate the value of the gold, silver, and platinum that were on board the ship. A Sunken Ship is divided into 6 activities that each take between 1 and 3 class periods to complete. Three short reading sections at the end of the module provide limited background information on how a ship is structured, the chemistry of corrosion, and the technology used in undersea explorations.