We've been having fun!

During our time in Science club we have experimented with electricity, our senses, floating and sinking, forces and our favourite - the volcanoes!
We learnt all sorts of things such as:-

making a circuit to light a bulb,
cars go faster when not on a carpet,
how our senses are improved if one is not working,
not all heavy items sink and it's more difficult to make a boat than we thought!

We had an amazing time in Science Club!!!

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Autumn Term 2015

Science Club Update

Last term we investigated lots of different things.  We looked at electricity and how we can light bulbs and make a buzzer work, this was trickier than we thought!

We found out about magnetism and how difficult it was for 2 magnets to stick together.  We were surprised at how not all metal objects are magnetic.

Making our own moving vehicles was a lot of fun.  Using elastic bands as the power we raced them across the hall.  We all made different designs.

We had a go at a feely bag and used our noses to see if we could guess what was in the bag and what we could smell.  We used 2 of our senses and we weren't that bad at it!

We used our hearing senses to try and follow a sound whilst being blindfolded. We found this very hard!

Exploding Pop!!!!!!!  Mrs Davies put mint sweets into a bottle of pop and it exploded like a firework, it's a good job we did it outside because it was very messy.

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 tried it in a bottle because it has a smaller top to see how it would flow. 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.

Senses

We tested out our senses! We used our noses and our hands to guess what we were touching and smelling.  There were lots of things to touch in the bag and it took a while to guess what they were, we weren't very good at guessing! The smelling test was fun but some of the smells weren't very nice until we found out what they were, they didn't smell like they should when we couldn't see them.

Balancing Robots

Our challenge in science club was to make a card robot balance on the tip of a finger.  We were given 2 robots to cut out, 2 1p coins and blue tack.  We needed to place the coins using the blue tack between the robots and make him balance.  It was very tricky but after a number of attempts we got there.  We managed to balance the robot on lots of different things e.g. scissors, pencil, our noses and even our hair! We took the robots home and tried it out on our mums and dads and they found it difficult too!

Magnets!!!!

We explored the power of magnets.  We were very surprised at the items that weren't magnetic.  We walked around the class and tried our magnets on almost everything. We had a competition between us to see who could pick up the most paper clips!

Senses - Is our hearing as good as a dog's? What's in the bag?

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.

 We tested our senses next by using touch. We used lots of adjectives to describe what we could feel. It was a bit scary at times because we didn't know what we might find in the bag!

Floating and Sinking

We collected an item from around the class and each of us made a guess as to whether it would float or sink. We were surprised with some of the items! Then we had a go at making our own floating vessel, it was musch trickier than we thought.

We made predictions about what would happen when we put vinegar on top of bicarbonate of soda. Some of us got it right.  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.

Float or sink?

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.  Afterwards we had plasticine to make our own floating vessel. It was very tricky but we had fun.

Can we 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.

(photos to follow)

Our Metal Detectors

Following on from our electricity experiments, we used the knowledge that we learned about circuits to build our own metal detectors.  We created a circuit with a button cell battery,  3 wires and a LED bulb.  Once we buillt our circuit we put it inside a plasticine alien we made.  We added foil for hands and tested it.  If we touched anything metal the aliens nose lit up.  We had a few problems along the way with the connections staying together but we got there in the end.

Autumn Term September 2014

Electricity

We have been investigating electricity.  We talked about things in our homes that use electricity and how we can make a bulb light up.  We used a battery as the power and connected it to a bulb using wires. On the end of the wires are crocodile clips (they look like a crocodiles teeth!)  We tried all sorts of ways to make the bulb light up but we soon realised we needed to make a circuit.  Hey Presto we have a lit bulb! We then tried to power a buzzer, it sounded very funny and tickled our finger tips when we touched it.  We had lots of fun!

Floating Vessels

We looked at different types of vessels to float on water and made our own out of plasticine.  It was much harder than we thought.

Static Electricity

We were experimenting with static electricity, first we rubbed balloons on our heads to see if it made our hair stand up, then we rubbed the balloons on our heads again and put it close to a tin can.  We were amazed when we saw the can move!

Year 3 Science Club

We investigated which colours woodlice and worms would prefer and why? As a group we chose 4 different colour pieces of card, they were green, yellow, black and blue. The card was placed into each corner of a large black tray so the woodlice and worms couldn't escape. We collected a number of woodlice and worms and placed them gently into the tray. One or two of them rolled into a ball but the rest walked quickly to the edges of the tray. They walked around the very edge which is black until they came to the black piece of card. They mostly stayed underneath the card.  We think they prefer dark colours because in their natural habitat they live under wood where it is dark and they feel safe.

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.

Which colours do woodlice prefer?

We investigated which colours woodlice would prefer and why? As a group we chose 4 different colour pieces of card, they were green, yellow, black and blue. The card was placed into each corner of a large black tray so the woodlice couldn't escape and white paper was placed in the middle. We collected a number of woodlice and placed them gently into the tray. One or two of them rolled into a ball but the rest walked quickly to the edges of the tray. They walked around the very edge which is black until they came to the black piece of card. They mostly stayed underneath the card.  We think they prefer dark colours because in their natural habitat they live under wood where it is dark and they feel safe.

Forces

We looked at how far a car would travel on different surfaces.  We used 2 different cars - a black truck and a green car and the surfaces tested were wooden floor, carpet and lino. We used metre sticks to measure the distance travelled. Our conclusion was the green car travelled the furthest each time and the wooden floor was the best surface for the cars to travel on.