Tag Archives: experiments

Reactions

Some Stage 3 students  have been learning about reactions. In buddy time this week, we did an experiment to see how sultanas react to soda water, and to lemonade. We looked at how the big and small bubbles formed in different places, and compared how much the sultanas ‘danced’ by moving around in the liquids.

We saw the sultanas danced more in lemonade than they did in soda water. We hypothesise (make a thinking guess) that this is because of the sugar.

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How are teeth like eggs?

The shell of an egg behaves kind of like a tooth. So, both Kindy classes did an experiment to see the effect of soft drink on an egg/tooth.

One egg sat in a popular brand of cola for a day, the control egg sat in water so we could compare what happened.

When the eggs came out, the cola egg was brown and slimy but the other egg was still clean.

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We know when teeth need to be cleaned, so we thought we should clean the egg. A dry toothbrush didn’t work. A wet brush didn’t work. Only a wet toothbrush with toothpaste helped, and only if we kept scrubbing long enough (singing the alphabet song once or twice in your head offs a good guide). This is the yucky egg after half of it was cleaned.

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One person wondered if it the inside of the egg would change colour like the shell changed colour. We opened the egg  tho find out but it was still egg coloured inside!



Plastic Bag Paratrooper

Check out this easy DIY toy 🙂

What you’ll need

  • Plastic shopping bag
  • Scissors
  • Pipe cleaners
  • Plastic action figure or doll

How to play

  1. Enlarge the handles of a plastic shopping bag by trimming the bag’s sides, front, and back as shown. Fold two pipe cleaners in half and loop each around a handle of the bag. Twist the ends of the pipe cleaners around the shoulders of a sturdy plastic action figure or doll.
  2. When your paratrooper’s ready to fly, fold the bag in half, grab the fold, and whip him up into the wild, blue yonder.
Plastic Bag Paratrooper


Thaumatropes

Thaumatropes are a great toy you can make yourself. You need something long and round, like a chopstick or a straw (although there are some versions that use rubber bands, or strings), and 2 pieces of paper or card the same size and shape (you could use one, and just fold it in hald). Stick the paper or card on either side of the stick or straw, so it looks a bit like a lollipop. Think of two things that could go together to make one picture, and draw one of those things on each side.

Due to a trick of your eyes called ‘persistence of vision’, when you spin it really fast, you will see the two pictures seem to join together to make one picture!

Some ideas to try:

  • Fish + bowl
  • Bird + cage
  • Cat + basket
  • Bunny + hutch
  • Spider + web
  • Helicopter + clouds
  • Tree + leaves / flowers
  • Book + words
  • Boat + waves / ocean
  • Island + palm trees
  • Plate + food
  • House + garden
  • Road + car


The Germ Experiment

AIM: How do germs get into you and on to other people?

METHOD:

  1. Mrs Klose put glitter on her hands. She put her hands on things and the glitter germs went on the things. When someone touched the things with glitter germs on them, the glitter germs went on the person! Then the person touched things and the glitter germs kept moving.
  2. We had to get rid of the glitter germs. we tried: paper towels and tissues, then water on its own, then water with soap, and scrubbing, and then some hand-wash from a bottle. Water and soap and scrubbing was the best at getting rid of glitter germs!

glitterhands

 

 



Growing our own beanstalks!

After reading ‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’ and viewing the story of ‘Jack and The Beanstalk’, Kindy worked in teams with our Stage 3 buddies to plant our own! Some of us had broad beans, and some had snow pea sprouts. We had to fill the bottom of our cup with damp paper towel and slide our bean down the inside, between the paper towel and the clear plastic cup – this way we would see it grow! We left them in a sunny spot and watered them regularly for about 3 weeks.

Some plants grew more than other ones. At first, some students thought that maybe the short plants didn’t get enough water, so we checked how wet they were. It turned out that the short plants were the wettest, and the tallest ones were the driest, so we decided that maybe some of the beans might have actually have drowned in too much water!

Finally we sorted our plants according to their height, using a ruler to measure and check. With the smallest plants, we measured their roots instead. The tallest plant was about 33cm tall!

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Glitter Germs

Today we used glitter to demonstrate how quickly and easily germs can spread. Some people got different colours of glitter put on their hands. Then, we did ordinary things like shaking hands, moving around the room, playing games, sharing equipment, and normal bookwork at our desks. At first we thought it was funny how the glitter spread around! Then when we realised that’s what germs do too, we understood how important it is to be clean, wash hands properly with soap, and to stay home when you’re sick.

glitter hands



Fake Stomachs

This term, we’re learning about the human body and all the systems in it. This week we studied the digestive system.

We did an experiment which shows how the stomach works. We tore bits of bread up and put them in (tightly sealed) zip lock bags with some orange juice, and kneeded it all together, checkiing to make observations every 30 seconds. It all looked pretty gross when we were done!



Fact or Fiction?

It seems the class has discovered the ‘joy’ of Urban Legends. Lots of scary stories keep being whispered around the school about ghosts, spirits, and all sorts of gruesome things.

We are going to learn some tricks to help us decide when a story like this is true, false, or a little bit of both.

Adam and Jamie are the stars of the show ‘Mythbusters’ who make a living by using the scientific method to test if stories are true or not. Here is a short video from one of their episodes about banana peels.

The scientific process that Mythbusters used is:

  • Identify the problem (ask a question)
  • Find information (research)
  • Make a hypothesis or theory (suggest a reason)
  • Conduct an experiment (supplies, precaution, steps)
  • Analyse data (how did your experiment work out?)
  • Draw conclusions (was your theory right?)

The task is, for you to choose either a superstition, and design a way to test if it is true or false – without putting anybody at risk. Then, try using this extra information on spotting an urban legend.

EXPERIMENT
Test subject:
Background research:
Supplies:
Precautions:
Instructions:

Reply in the comments with superstitions and urban legends you know.



Balloon Rockets

We created balloon rockets to demonstrate how the force of thrust pushes real rockets up in the air. Our rockets begand by threading a straw onto some string, tieing the string to something, and holding the other end tight. Then, we would blow up a balloon and stickytape it to the top of the straw. Finally, we let the end of the balloon loose so the air came out the back pushing the balloon forward up to the end of the string.