In addition to informal assessments of student's graphs, you could ask them to imagine living on Venus with an ambient temperature of 740 K. Challenge your students to determine which elements would have different physical states in this new environment from their physical states on Earth? How many liquid, solid, and gas phase elements would exist on the surface of Venus? Ask students to imagine how life might be different under these circumstances. How successful would you be using a lead tool on Venus? How about the outer planets of our solar system? Use the Internet to locate ambient temperatures on Pluto or Uranus. Which elements would exist in the gas or liquid phases on these planets far from the sun?

An alternative assessment strategy would be to ask students to create graphs showing the melting point and boiling point data for the first two groups of elements and the first two periods of elements on the periodic table. Ask students to summarize the trends they observe for these elements. (See graphs below.)