Volcanoes

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.

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.

How can we make an egg float?

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 Davies helped us to add 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

 

Electricity

We had a lot of fun experimenting with lighting light bulbs and making a buzzer sound.  We used wires, crocodile clips, batteries, battery holders, light bulbs, light bulb holders and buzzers.  We lit 1 bulb and then tried to light as many bulbs as possible with the batteries.  We could manage 3 bulbs on 1 set of batteries but found that the light was much dimmer.  We added pieces of decorated pieces to the buzzers and watched as they spun around.