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.



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.

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.

 

 

FOSSIL HUNTER

I am a fossil hunter just like Mary Anning who found the first dinosaur bones ever 200 years ago. It is amaaazzzing what I have found near our house in Drakes Broughton. It all started when Ed found a Devil's Toenail in our garden. A Devil's Toenail is what people used to call a fossil called a GRYPHAEA. A gryphaea is a creature that lived 200 MILLION YEARS AGO when the dinosaurs lived on the Earth. It looked a bit like an oyster. It is now EXTINCT.

Ed told us where he used to find lots of gryphaeas when he was a boy. He told us to look near the fishing pond. Daddy and I went fossil hunting. We took tools like hand forks, trowels, knives and a hammer. I felt like a real PALEONTOLOGIST. We found lots of gryphaeas.

When Mummy, Libby and I went to pick blackberries I started to look for fossils on the farmer's track. I found this amazing fossil. There are lots of tiny fossil shells in this piece of rock and there is also something that looks like a fly.

 

 

MICROSCOPE

I am very excited to have my new microscope. It is amazing to see things really closely. These are the things I have examined so far:

PLANT CELLS
I have looked at the skin of an onion and seen the CELLS. Inside each cell is a NUCLEUS.

CREATURES
You have to cut the things you see under a microscope really really small and they have to be a bit see through. I found a wasp and cut a tiny piece of its wing off and looked at it. Ed brought us a sample of pond water from his pond. We saw some little tiny creatures scooting about under the microscope. We couldn't see them when we just looked with our eyes. Amaaaaazzzzing!


CRYSTALS

I also looked at CRYSTALS. I love crystals and like finding them on the ground. Under my microscope I looked at two different types of sand, salt crystals and sand crystals. I could see the flat and square shapes of the crystals.

Me collecting sand samples

MY LABORATORY

I love science! I have turned my bedroom into a lab. I have a blackboard for writing ideas and my experiments. I have science books, a specimen box, a microscope and a magnifying glass. I am going to do lots of experiments in my lab.

MAGNETISM

We are doing science with magnets!

We fished fish to see if the fish were magnetic. They were magnetic because we used a magnetic fishing rod to fish them. We did not think the magnets would work in the water. They did!!!


















We made a magnetic racing car. We put another magnet under the table to see if the racing car would go and it did! So magnets work through liquids (water) and solids (table top).

Magnets have two different sides. They have a north and south side. These are called POLES. The north and south or south and north stick together. If they are the same, they do not work. We know that OPPOSITES ATTRACT.

We also tried to find out if there is iron in our breakfast cereal. Our experiment did not work, but it was interesting.

Everyday objects - which ones are magnetic?...

10p x
 cereal x
keys yes
hairslide yes
knife yes
5p x
1p yes
2p x
radiator x

IRON FILINGS

Iron filings are tiny particles of iron. Iron is a METAL. We put a magnet underneath the piece of card that had iron filings on the top. When we moved the magnet around, the iron filings moved around!!!

 

 

I made some butterflies and got them to fly using magnets.