Environmental education: the chemical composition of mineral water related to the elements of the periodic table

Abstract

Among the transversal themes, environmental education is one that should be worked during scholar period. One way to address such matters is interdisciplinarity, relating the different themes proposed by the National Curricular Parameters to the formal contents of each discipline. In the present work, educational activities were carried out in chemistry class, in which the objective was relating the chemical composition of commercial mineral waters, of different producers, to the elements of the periodic table, in order to promote the teaching of chemistry integrated environmental education. The target audience were students of the ninth grade of elementary school, aged 13 to 15 years old of a school in the private network. The methodology consisted of the presentation of the characteristics of drinking water, then the analysis of commercial mineral waters labels, and the students should identify the elements and substances present, with their concentrations. The arguments that have supported the student analysis were talked to epistemological theoretical frameworks previously selected, based on cross-cutting and interdisciplinary. The students reported that they had never previously observed the label of a bottle of mineral water, and, after practice, they might perceive the amount of information present in it, that they referred to the subject studied in class about the periodic table. The professor has guided a discussion in which a correlation between the location of water source and your chemical composition was performed. The importance of preserving the natural sources was emphasized as well as the variety of mineral waters related inherent to the site of the source.