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Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Balloon Rocket

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Teacher had a balloon (actually, she had a rocket one and an ordinary balloon - they both work in the same way). She wanted us to fly the balloon straight to her. Some of us tried, but it was impossible. We looked round the classroom to see if there is anything going all the way across the classroom that could help us get the balloon to her. We decided that we should use string and a straw - they are both long and straight. Teacher put the string (she used thread) through the straw, and two of us held either end for her. Teacher blew up the balloon and taped the balloon to the straw. We counted down 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 Blast off! and let go the balloon. It zoomed across the classroom. We were wondering if the balloon could fly uphill, so one of us sat on a chair, holding the thread, while the other stood (carefully) on the table. Sure enough the balloon was happy to fly uphill. We noticed that the air coming out the end of the balloon causes the balloon to fly in the opposite direction. We really loved this investigation!

Science Open Day

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 Senior Infants, Room 5 held an open day, to display the science we have done so far this year to teachers from our school and from another junior school in Ennis. It was an exciting day, and each pupil got the chance to man a table with an investigation of their own. Of course, we will do many more investigations before the year is over, so look out for our next open day in January or February. The investigations we demonstrated were: fingerprints, minibeasts, weather stick, model lungs, strawberries, helicopters, colour wheels, colour fans and acetates, smartie science, lions in cages, eggs-how to tell raw from cooked, in vinegar, how to get an egg into a bottle, dancing raisins, racing colours and string telephones.Thanks so much to the Galway Education Centre for always showing so much interest in the science we do in class. Thanks to them too for the T-Shirts and goodies they sent as a reminder for us of our great day.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Egg in a bottle

Friday, October 16th, 2009
More eggs! We are having so much fun with eggs these days. Teacher had 2 bottles with small necks. We were wondering if there is any way we could get a boiled egg into the bottle, even though the egg was bigger than the neck of the bottle.Teacher had to do these investigations herself because the water in the bottles was boiling hot - too dangerous for us to touch. First she tried to push a boiled egg, with the shell on it, into the bottle. It didn't fit. Next she peeled the egg and tried again. With water in the bottle, the egg just sat happily on top. The action started when teacher poured the boiling water out of the bottle, and then put the egg on top. Once the bottle started cooling down, the egg began to be sucked into the bottle. It got sucked in a little, but we think the eggs we tried were just too big - the rim of the bottle cut the egg so the egg broke (but half of it ended up in the bottle). We tried again with another egg. This time teacher lit a candle and put the egg on top. The candle went out (because there was no more oxygen in the bottle). When the bottle cooled, the egg was sucked into the bottle. Again the egg got stuck in the neck of the bottle. The seal was so good that we could turn the bottle upside down, and the egg stayed put.
We loved this investigation. We can't wait to try it again with smaller eggs. Are you wondering why it works? It works because when the bottle is emptied of boiling water, or when it has a match that had been lit inside it, the bottle is full of steam. Steam takes up lots of space. When the bottle cools down the steam inside turns into water. Water doesn't take up as much space as steam, so inside the bottle there is a vacuum and the egg is sucked (under pressure) into the bottle.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Planting Daffodil Bulbs

Thursday, October 15th, 2009 Today we planted daffodil bulbs. They look very like onions. We planted one each - we had to dig a hole with a trowel, pop in the bulb with the roots facing downwards, then fill in the hole with the soil we had taken out. We saw lots and lots of worms. We know the bulbs will be safe and warm in the ground all winter. We look forward to seeing the beautiful daffodils in the spring!



Squeezing Eggs

Thursday, October 15th, 2009 We are still fascinated with eggs. We were wondering - if eggs are so delicate, why does the mother hen not crush them when she sits on them? We thought we should try and find out how strong they are. Each of us had a turn squeezing them with our hands. We squeezed as hard as we could, and to our surprise, not one of us could crack the raw egg! But we are kids.....so we gave the adults a go. They couldn't break the egg either. Someone was wondering if the egg would crack if we sat on it. We all wondered this, but didn't try it, in case someone had to spend the rest of the day with a crushed egg all over their bottom!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Dancing Raisins

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
We had fizzy lemonade and raisins in school today so we thought we would see if we could get the raisins to float in water and in lemonade. We all had our own raisins to try but they all did the same thing. We first had to guess whether raisins float in water, float in lemonade, sink in water, sink in lemonade or float and sink in water or lemonade. To keep the test fair we used the same amount of water and lemonade.
This is what we discovered: Raisins sink in water, they also sink in lemonade at the start, but then the bubbles in the lemonade stick to the raisins, so the raisins float. When the floating raisins get to the top of the lemonade the bubbles burst, and the raisins sink to the bottom again, until more bubbles stick to them (like having their very own swimming arm bands)....and so it goes on and on till the fizz goes flat.
After watching them for a while we decided we would try and see what it felt like being a raisin in lemonade. We curled up and sank, had bubbles stick on to us, floated for a while till teacher said "pop", and then we sank down again. We think the raisins must have had great fun doing this experiment!

Eggs-periments

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Teacher had some eggs in class with her today. She had a problem though - she had cooked some eggs and left some raw, and then put them all back into the egg carton together. We had to help her find a way to tell which were raw and which were cooked. We thought of lots of things, including smelling the eggs (didn't work, they all smelled the same), but most involved breaking the eggs, which teacher didn't want to do. Eventually we came up with the idea of spinning the eggs - this was a tereffic idea. When you spin a raw egg, then put your hand gently on it to stop it, then take your hand off the egg starts to spin again. This is like a child in a car crash with no seat belt - when the car stops suddenly, the child keeps going, maybe out the car window. With the cooked egg, when it is stopped, it stays stopped even when the hand is taken away. This is like a child with a seat belt on in the car. When the car stops suddenly, so does the child. The reason this happens is that the inside of a cooked egg is solid, while the inside of a raw egg is quite liquidy.
With the eggs still undamaged we decided to try and see what would happen to a raw egg if we leave it overnight in water. Will it change colour? melt? dissolve? What will happen if we leave it overnight in vinegar? Check this site out tomorrow to find out! No one knows the answer (well, teacher might but she's not telling!) Thursday, October 15th, 2009We had a look at our eggs this morning. The egg on the left is the one that was in water. When we took it out of the water it looked exactly the same as it did yesterday. The egg that was in the vinegar didn't. All the shell had come off. The shell is still hard but the brown colour came off in the tissue. There was even a brown skim floating on the top of the vinegar. Teacher poked at the egg, and said it wasn't ready yet so it has gone back into the vinegar until Monday. What on earth is going to happen to it?

Visiting our local recycling bank

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009As a green school we are very interested in recycling in our class and in our schools. We talk lots about recycling. We use recycling bins in our class and at home. We even use recycled water (rainwater) on our plants in class. We have coloured recycling posters for a competition. Today we took a walk to our local recycling bank - a 2minute walk from our class. We looked at each of the bins and tried to use our reading skills to figure what goes in each bin. We found out that we can't recycle cans or tins here but on one of the bins we could read what to do with our tins and cans (put them in our green wheelie bins at home once they are clean and dry). We can't wait to collect lots of bottles from home and take our families to the recycling bank.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

School Garden

We have a small school garden. We will be watching it closely through the seasons. It looks good now in Autumn.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Lions in Cages

Friday, October 9th, 2009 When we were spinning our colour wheels last week we noticed that if you spin things fast enough your eyes might not be able to keep up and you migh see something that is not actually there! Teacher had pictures of lions and cages, and prisoners with cages. We cut them out, stuck them on our pencils and spun them. When they were spinning quickly it looked like the lions and the prisoners were behind bars. This happens because our eyes can't send messages to our brains quickly enough for our brains to realise that we are looking at two different pictures, and not just a single one.