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  • Our STEM projects are designed so that participants get it wrong before they get it right. You will observe your students struggling as they attempt to create their own STEM projects. This process is an empowering experience, building perseverance, frustration tolerance and growing overall confidence! With your support, students will step out of their comfort zones to think, build and problem-solve for themselves
  • Product Struggle Opportunities:
    - Threading straws
    -Using tape to secure the vacuum
    -Cutting the large balloon

In this Rosie Labs guide you will find:

  • Productive struggle opportunities for students during their project build,
  • Lesson objectives and concept overview,
  • Optional STEM topic video to share with participants,
  • Step-by-step instructions and video of the Rosie Riveters’ Artificial Lungs Project,
  • Optional STEM activities to further explore the objectives and concepts used in the project build.

Objective

Students will explore how their lungs work, what vacuums are, and how they play an important role in respiration.

Concept Overview and Experiment Inspiration

Place the palms of your hands on your stomach and take in a big deep breath (inhale). Then let the breath out (exhale). What did you notice? Did your stomach get bigger as you inhaled? Did it get smaller as you exhaled? The average adult breathes in and out (inhales and exhales) 17,000-30,000 times a day! A big reason we are able to take this many breaths is because of a powerful muscle called the diaphragm.

Below your lungs, connected to your ribcage, is your diaphragm. Your diaphragm is a muscle that expands and contracts (gets bigger and smaller) to help you breathe in and out.

Your lungs function somewhat like a vacuum. A vacuum is a space with little or no matter, including air! Because there is very little in the space, the space inside a vacuum has very low-pressure. A partial vacuum, like your lungs, will always have just a little bit of air. (Theoretically, a true vacuum will contain no matter, or air whatsoever. ) The higher-pressure of air surrounding the lower-pressure vacuum, combined with the mechanism of your diaphragm, helps move air in and out of your lungs.

When you inhale through your mouth and nose and the air travels through the trachea, the trachea will ultimately branch into two different parts known as the right bronchi and left bronchi. Each bronchus (singular) will then divide again and again, becoming narrower and narrower. Your smallest airways (bronchi) end in the small thin air sacs known as alveoli. These “balloons” are arranged in clusters. When you breathe in, the alveoli will expand like balloons as air rushes to fill the vacuum. When you breathe out, the “balloons” will relax, moving air out of the lungs.

As you breathe in, the alveoli will expand like balloons as air rushes to fill the vacuum. When you breathe out, the “balloons” will relax, moving air out of the lungs. At the same time that these balloons fill, your diaphragm pulls down helps create more space for air to flow into your body. Then as you breathe out, your diaphragm relaxes after all its hard work and the smaller space pushes air back out of your body.

In in this project, as the large balloon (diaphragm) is pulled it creates more space inside the cup. Air can then come down the straws and fill the inside balloons which now have more space to expand. When you let go, the amount of the space in the cup decreases so the air goes back out through the straws and the balloons deflate.

Science Goals

  • A vacuum is a space with little or no matter, creating a low-pressure space. Your lungs function as a partial vacuum system,
  • When the diaphragm contracts, air gets pulled into your lungs. When the diaphragm relaxes, air is forced out of the lungs.

Vocabulary

Diaphragm – the major muscle in respiration. It is a large, dome-shaped muscle that contracts continually to assist in breathing.
Vacuum – a space with little or no matter, creating a low-pressure area.

Required Materials

  • tape
  • scissors
  • small plastic cup with a hole
  • Two small balloons
  • two small straws
  • large balloon

Step-By-Step Instructions

Step 1

Secure each of the small balloons to a small straw using tape. Be sure not to have the straw touch the base of the balloon.

Step 2

Thread the two straws with the balloons through the hole in the center of the cup. Secure the straws with tape. The balloons should be sitting inside the cup. Make sure they do not move past the lip of the cup.

Step 3

Cut the neck of the large balloon off. Stretch the large balloon across the opening of the cup sealing the small balloons inside.

Optional STEM Activities

Resource 1

The Incredible Diaphragm!

Students can explore the lungs further with this easy activity. Your diaphragm is a critical component to breathing, along with your two lungs. Have students use their hands to help demonstrate how the diaphragm moves.

Overlap your two hands and make a concave shape to demonstrate your diaphragm expanding to allow air in and then place them flat again, with a slight curve (like a little hill) to demonstrate what happens when you breathe back out. Have the students make this motion as they breathe in and out.

digital x-ray image of the lungs
Vacuums, Anatomy

Rosie Explores the Lungs

Have fun exploring how lungs work, what vacuums are, and how they play an important role in respiration.

Resource 2

Lung Power!

Put students in pairs with a straw and an assortment of light objects such as a ping-pong ball, feather, a strip of paper folded with accordion folds.

Have each pair take a turn with their own straw to breathe in and blow the air out through the straw, using the force of their breath to move one object at a time.

Each pair can chart the length their object traveled. They can continue experimenting with different objects that are heavier, lighter, more dense or less dense.

Discussion questions: What happens to the object when you blow after taking a deep breath vs. a shallow breath? What other objects can you move? What objects are you not able to move?