Floating and sinking

We made guesses as to which items we thought would float or sink.  We wrote down our answers and tested them out.  We were very surprised at some of the items, the wooden block floated and not sunk.  Afterwards we had plasticine to make our own floating vessel. It was very tricky but we had fun.

Volcanos

We made predictions about what would happen when we put vinegar on top of bicarbonate of soda. Some of us got it right.  We put it in a cup first and saw it bubble, then we tried it in a bottle because it has a smaller top to see if it would flow better. It did! We decided to make our own volcano out of plasticine. We chose plasticine because it is waterproof.  The volcano was put into a bowl to make sure it didn't make a mess and the bicarbonate was put in first followed by the vinegar.  We were amazed at how much the volcano erupted.  The smell was terrible but we had a lot of fun.

Telephones!

We experimented with polystyrene cups and string to make a device that acts like a phone. A hole was made in the bottom of the cups and string was knotted at the bottom to stop it coming out.  We held the string tight and spoke into one end whilst the other person listened.  It was very funny with some of the things we heard but had not said!

Invisible messages

We dipped a cotton bud into lemon juice and used it to write a message on a piece of paper.  We left it to dry and Mrs Davies used a hot iron to make the message appear.  We found out that the heat from the iron changed the lemon juice into another chemical that is brown in colour and revealed our messages.

Can you hear as well as a dog?

We tested our hearing to see if we could hear as well as a dog.  We wore a blindfold and used only our hearing to find the person making the noise. We enjoyed finding where the noise came from and found out that dogs can hear sounds before we can and that's why we have them as guard dogs.

Food glorious food

We investigated which liquid would make a fresh egg float.  We had 4 glasses of water and put the following in them and stirred:-

Glass 1 - sugar
Glass 2 - flour
Glass 3 - salt
Glass 4 - nothing added

We all made predictions as to which glass the egg would float in, what do you think?

Mrs Dyas added the eggs slowly into each glass and we were very surprised at the result. Did you guess correctly?

The glass with the salt water made the egg float.

We also found out that we can test the freshness of eggs by putting them into a glass of water.

Floating - stale egg

Sinking - fresh egg

Next we looked at the amazing cornflour and water experiment.  We mixed cornflour and water together and when we rolled it into a ball it was a solid, when we stopped rolling it and left it on our hands it turned to a liquid. We then rolled it back into a solid and stopped rolling for it to go back into a liquid. It was great fun but extremely messy.

Welcome to Science club

Over the last two weeks we have been investigating floating and sinking and how high a ball can bounce.

We made predictions as to which materials would float or sink in water and then we combined the items to see if we could make the heavier items float. We were surprised with some of the items that floated.

Last week we investigated which ball would bounce the highest.  We brought in some of our own balls and made predictions on which we thought would be the bounciest.  We made sure that it was a fair test by dropping the balls at the same height with arms outstretched.  We were very surprised at how high the golf ball bounced.  We then measured the height and worked out the difference between them.