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Step 3 Plastic Moulding Theory

This is a theory lesson taught to show how important plastics are in our everyday life and how plastic products are made in factories.

Learning Objective of individual lesson:

• Why plastics are used for particular products (properties of plastics)
• Properties of plastics
• Difference between thermo and thermosetting plastics

Learning Activities:

• Starter: Quick fire questions! A mini head to head challenge to get the students thinking about the theme of this lesson.
  • Get the students to sit on a chair/stool
  • Explain the rules! no hesitation, no urrm's or arrr's, no repeats of previous answer
  • If any of the three rules are broken...your out! and you sit down
  • The game is to name any every day product made from or using plastic.....sounds simple right!
  • Get the kids to stand and commence battle.......when the teacher points at a child they need to immediately answer!
  • It is last kid standing wins
• This game is fun and they usually want to play it again....save it for the end of the lesson..... if you have time
• The reason for this activity id to get the students to realise just how many products involve plastic and how important it is to our lives!

• Demonstration of thermo plastic (use a scrap piece of acrylic and heat it with a hot air gun, resape and let it cool) explain the difference between thermo and thermosetting plastics

• Role play of chemical structure....
  • I take the class outside as lots of room is needed. I get the students to form four parralel lines with a small gap inbetween the lines. they put their hands on the persons shoulders infront of them. row one moves forward, row two back, row three forward and row four back.....they are acting like a thermo plastic as the monomer chains can move independantly.

• Reset the lines and now get the students to keep their right hand on the person infront and the left hand on the persons shoulder to their left (person in the next line)....this represents the cross chains found in thermosetting polymers......now get the students to move, its important they know that they must not let go of either the person infront or to the left.....very quickly the students will become knotted and unable to move.... this represents the chemical structure of thermosetting polymers.

• Properties of plastics
  • Use the power point to get the class to guess the 5 basic properties of plastics 

• Different manufacturing methods you tube vids + discussion.
  • I show you tube vids of injection, blow and vacuum moulding
  • I ask the kids at random to think of a product made using that particular process

• Lesson recap (plenary)…. With a pop! Questions based on what’s been learnt. The night before I write a series of questions on small pieces of paper based on this lesson e.g. name a property of plastic....or....describe thermo plastic....etc.. each question is put into a balloon and inflated. In the lesson i start by asking a question and the person who gets it correct gets to pop the next balloon and read the next question........this is huge fun and is guaranteed to get all the students focused on the main learning objectives of the lesson.