Radioactivity: Grade 11 STEM Road Map for High School

What if you could challenge your 11th graders to figure out the best response to a partial meltdown at a nuclear reactor in fictional Gammatown, USA? Radioactivity helps high school students understand the debate over the safety and efficiency of using nuclear power to meet the country’s energy demands. Teams of students will apply what they learn about the science and history of nuclear energy to convey the views of particular stakeholder groups. They will explore how radioactive decay, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion work. They will model nuclear fission, create computer-generated simulations, and perform mathematical computations. Mathematics skills will help them calculate the energy yield of an individual nuclear event (decay, fission, and fusion) and use exponential functions to represent chain reactions. Finally, they’ll make a presentation and adopt the roles of stakeholders grappling with the aftermath of the accident.