Tuesday 22 October 2013

AIR PRESSURE IS AMAZING

We did an experiment to find out how bubbles of air can make this float and sink in water. The force that makes this happen inside the bubble is called air pressure. In our experiment we filled a bottle with water and put a diver inside it. We made the diver from a plastic bag and attached it to a paperclip. The diver was supposed to sink when the bottle was squeezed and float when it was not squeezed. Unfortunately, this did not work. My diver just got stuck upside down. We are not sure why this happened. It is a mystery!


The next experiment we did worked much better. I screwed up a piece of paper and put it in the bottom of a glass. I filled up the washing bowl with water and then turned the glass upside down and put it in the water. You will never believe it, but the paper stayed completely dry! This is because the air inside the glass pushed up against the paper and kept it dry. Amazing!

 
 
We then did another amazing experiment. We filled a glass of water and put a piece of card underneath it. When we turned the glass of water upside down, the card stuck to it. Even though the water is really heavy it did not fall down! The reason this happens is because the pressure of the air pushing underneath the card is stronger than the pressure of the water to break the seal around the glass.



Saturday 19 October 2013

THE GREAT ASTRONOMER GALILEO

I went to see a storyteller at the Worcester Beeline festival. He told us all about the story of the astronomer Galileo who was the first person to discover that the Earth goes around the Sun and not the other way around. We also learned how the Moon travels around the Earth and how the shadow of the Earth makes us see the Moon differently during the month. It was fun pretending to be Galileo's students and to find out that he went to prison for making such amazing discoveries. Some people were scared by his ideas.


Saturday 5 October 2013

CRYSTALS

We made some crystals. We had lots of fun making them. We had sugar and water. We mixed it together it the sugar DISSOLVED. It means that when we mixed the sugar in, the sugar has to disappear. It is still in the water, but it is liquidy. Instead of being grainy and hard, it is liquidy. A couple of weeks it was allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll crystals because the liquid had EVAPORATED and left behind the hard sugar crystals. We tried to get it out of the pot, but we could not get it out, so we used a knife and I ate the bits. It was sticky, crunchy and sweet. What's next? We looked at the crystals under the magnifying glass and they looked amaaaaaaziiiiing! They were JAGGEDY and BUMPY. The surfaces of the crystals were SHARP and FLAT. My favourite crystal in my crystal book is calle BLUE GREEN SMITHSONITE. It can be found in the United States, Australia, Greece, Italy, Mexico and Namibia.