Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What’s that made of?

20 minutes

Find Out: Materials used in manufacturing mobile phones

25 minutes

Take Action: Properties of materials used in manufacturing

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions

Students will:

identify the materials used in the manufacture of mobile phones and understand how their properties influence their function
discover where the materials used in mobile phones come from and how they are obtained.

Success criteria

Students can:

list the materials used in the manufacture of mobile phones
describe the properties of these materials and outline how their properties influence their function
recall where the materials used originate from and how they are obtained.

Tune In: What’s that made of?

Step 1

Explain to your class that in this lesson, they will be exploring what mobile phones are made of. 97% of people in Australia aged between 16-64 have a smartphone (Source). This is approximately 25,220,000 people! This number doesn’t include all of the old phones that people have lying around or the new ones that will be purchased. With more being manufactured by the second, it is really important to think about what actually goes into making a phone.

Step 2

To begin finding out what students already know about what mobile phones are made of, pair up students and give each pair a copy of this What’s in a Mobile Phone? Worksheet. Invite each pair to label the worksheet with what materials they think make up the parts of the mobile phone listed. You can scaffold students using the image of the worksheet on the attached visual explainer.

Step 3

Once pairs have finished labelling the worksheet, ask each group to discuss and note down why they think each material is chosen for these components. If they aren't sure why that particular material might be used, they can label it with a question mark.

Step 4

Invite a few pairs to report their answers to the class. Other students in the class can show if they agree or disagree with the answers using a thumbs up or down. Discuss as a class and share the answers using the attached visual explainer.

Find Out: Materials used in manufacturing mobile phones

Step 1

Watch the following video with your students that shows what materials are used to create mobile phones. Encourage students to pay attention to the names of the materials and their functions as they will be completing a quiz about this in the next step!

MobileMuster - What’s Inside Your Phone (vimeo.com/263456775)

Step 2

In the same pairs as earlier, direct students to the ‘What’s in a Mobile Phone!’ Quiz from MobileMuster which quizzes students on the materials in a mobile phone and their function. In their pairs, students will read the text and then answer the questions. They can also use their learnings from the video. The video is also featured on the quiz webpage just in case students would like to watch it again.

For students and classes that require a little more support, you could complete this quiz as a team, using volunteers to read the text and choosing your answers from a show of hands.

For students and classes that require a little more support, you could complete this quiz as a team, using volunteers to read the text and choosing your answers from a show of hands.

Step 3

Discuss the results of the quiz as a class.

What materials had students heard of before?
Which materials were new to them?
Are these materials easy to access?
Are these materials sustainable?
Are these materials recyclable?
Are these materials affordable?
What questions do they have about the materials they were introduced to?

Take Action: Properties of materials used in manufacturing

Step 1

Divide the class into 11 groups (depending on your class size, these could just be the pairs from the beginning of the lesson) and assign each group one of the materials mentioned in the clip.

Explain to the class that they will be researching the materials that make up mobile phones in more detail.

Gold	Silver	Palladium	Copper
Lithium	Neodymium	Tungsten	Crude Oil
Bauxite/Aluminium	Platinum	Silica

Step 2

Students can use the table on the Student Worksheet to guide their research investigation of their material. You might like to demonstrate how to fill out the table using a few examples.

Invite students to research their assigned material using the internet. The following resources might be useful:

Recycling - MobileMuster (mobilemuster.com.au/recycling/)
MobileMuster Flip Book (mobilemuster.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-Recycling-Process-Book.pdf)

Use a kid-friendly browser like Kiddle (kiddle.co) to ensure resources are safe and easy to understand.

Name of material
Where does this material come from? Is there a main country or continent, or multiple locations from which it is extracted?
How do we get this material? e.g. mining, drilling, or filtering from rivers or streams.
What are the properties of this material? Why is it used in phones?
How rare is the material?Is there little of the material in the world, or is it expensive to get?
Cost per tonne How expensive is it in US dollars?*(If it isn’t measured in tonnes, provide the unit it is measured in)

*US dollars have been specified as many resources are measured this way and a common currency allows students to directly compare the value of the materials.

Students requiring extension can convert all the US dollar values into the same unit of mass (e.g. tonnes) to easily compare them. Students can use this conversion calculator (digitaldutch.com/unitconverter/mass) to convert one unit of mass to another. Alternatively, you can use the approximate values from the Teacher Content Information.

Step 3

Invite one person from each group to report back with their findings. Discuss the findings as a class, taking note of any commonalities or differences. Pin the tables up to refer to later.

Explain to students that all of these materials need to be used in massive amounts in order to manufacture the amount of phones and devices society uses. What impact do they think this has on the environment?

The next lesson in this unit uses a game for students to explore how these materials are obtained from the Earth and the impact of their extraction on the environment.

Reflection

Invite students to individually complete this ‘3,2,1’ activity on their Student Worksheet:

3 recalls - What did you learn from this lesson?
2 insights - How is this information relevant to you, society or the environment?
1 question - What do you still want to know?

What’s Inside Your Smartphone?

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Summary

Lesson Guides and Printables

In this lesson

What’s Inside Your Smartphone?

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Summary

Lesson Guides and Printables

In this lesson