This is the new updated edition of the first book in the bestselling Uncovering Student Ideas in Science series. Like the first edition of volume 1, this book helps pinpoint what your students know (or think they know) so you can monitor their learning and adjust your teaching accordingly. Loaded with classroom-friendly features you can use immediately, the book includes 25 “probes”—brief, easily administered formative assessments designed to understand your students’ thinking about 60 core science concepts.

Access this probe as a Google form: English

Download this probe as an editable PDF: English

The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about an important fossil fuel used by humans. The probe is designed to reveal how students trace oil back to its original source of material.

Friendly Talk

fossil fuel, natural resource, nonrenewable resource

The best answer is Seth’s: “It came mostly from microscopic and other ocean organisms millions of years ago.” The majority of petroleum oil is generally thought to come from the fossil remains of tiny animal and plantlike marine organisms. The majority of these organisms were phytoplankton and zooplankton. Larger plants and animals may have also contributed to the formation of oil, but their contribution is fairly insignificant compared with the tiny marine organisms; therefore, Nathan’s response would not be correct. As these tiny sea organisms died, their bodies collected on the seafloor and were gradually buried under layers of sediment and subsequent rock layers. Justine’s response mentions the sediments but not the organisms contained in those sediments. As the accumulating sediments exerted pressure and heat, the remains of the organisms were gradually chemically transformed over millions of years into oil. Julie’s response applies to coal, another type of fossil fuel. Coal is formed through a similar process involving accumulation of dead organisms and conditions of high heat and pressure, but coal comes primarily from land vegetation—trees and giant ferns that lived long ago, died, and accumulated faster than they could decompose. The word petroleum means “rock oil,” which may imply to some people that oil comes primarily from rocks rather than once living organisms, hence Ross’s response. Malia’s response refers to a product of oil—gasoline. Oil is refined and processed to make gasoline. Gasoline is not found naturally within the Earth like oil.

Elementary Students

In the elementary grades, students learn about different Earth materials that provide resources for human use. They learn that some materials are renewable and others cannot be renewed and are limited. As they learn about fossils, they can connect the idea of fossils to fossil fuels, simply understanding that some fuels, like oil, coal, and natural gas, come from the remains of ancient plants and animals.

Middle School Students

In the middle grades, students develop a more sophisticated understanding of fossil fuels by learning about the geologic processes that formed them and the differences among fossil fuels. Their increased comprehension of prehistoric conditions and the magnitudes of geologic time helps them understand why fossil fuels are considered to be nonrenewable resources.

High School Students

Students at the high school level build upon their K–8 knowledge of fossil fuels by recognizing why these fuels are such rich sources of energy. Their knowledge of chemistry helps them understand how the energy released from breaking the chemical bonds of oil and coal’s hydrocarbon molecules came originally from the solar energy captured by phytoplankton and plants and is released through the combustion process.

Make sure students know that the probe is referring to petroleum oil, not other forms of oil they may be thinking of, such as vegetable oil, olive oil, or mineral oil. For younger students, consider reducing the choices to four or five answers to select from.

• Some middle school students think dead organisms simply rot away. They do not realize that the matter from the dead organism is converted into other materials in the environment (AAAS 1993, p. 343). Also, some middle school students think organisms and materials in the environment are very different types of matter (AAAS 1993, p. 342). Because of these notions, some students may have difficulty believing that oil and coal were once the remains of living organisms.
• Misconceptions about fossil fuels may arise for a variety of reasons. Students sometimes misinterpret the word fossil to mean dinosaur, and sometimes animals like dinosaurs are used in cartoons that depict the formation of fossil fuels (also note the logo used on Sinclair gas stations). Some students think fossil fuel comes from whale blubber because they know that, historically, whale oil was used to heat and light homes before petroleum oil was discovered in the ground (Rule 2005).
• In a study comparing gifted with average students, both sets of students had similar misconceptions, with little difference between numbers of students who held misconceptions in both groups (Rule 2005).

Energy Resources. NSTA SciGuide. Online at http://learningcenter.nsta.org/product_detail. aspx?id=10.2505/5/SG-08

Hudson, T., and G. Camphire. 2005. Petroleum and the environment. The Science Teacher (Dec.): 34–35.

• Help students understand what environmental conditions and the types of life-forms that existed hundreds of millions of years ago were like at that time. Some students think the Earth today is the same as it has always been. Learning about the changes that happen over long periods of time, including changes that happen on the seafloor, will help them understand the long geologic process that contributes to the formation of oil.
• When teaching about how one type of rock can be transformed metamorphically into a different type of rock under conditions of intense heat and pressure over long periods of time, include information about how fossil fuels were also formed by heat and pressure over long periods of time, transforming material from living organisms into coal or oil.
• Challenge students with the question, “If time, heat, and pressure are what it takes to create oil from dead microscopic plants and animals, why can’t we just manufacture oil to replenish the supply inside the Earth?”
• A Java simulation showing how oil is formed can be found at www.sciencelearn.org.nz/contexts/future_fuels/sci_media/ animations/oil_formation.
• The persistence of fossil fuel misconceptions into adulthood indicates the critical need to help younger students understand the scientific concepts involved. Students need to understand how fossil fuels originated in order to understand their nonrenewable nature, their uneven distribution worldwide, and the ensuing political consequences (Rule 2005).