Water Experiments with Senior Infants

Wednesday, 19th December. Some easy water experiments to try at home:
Make a Diver
We made a diver out of marla, and connected him to a pen cap with a paper clip and an elastic band.We can get the diver to sink by squeezing the bottle, and we can make him surface again by letting go.This is because the diver floats when the pen cap is full of air but he sinks when the air in the cap is compressed (from the squeezing) and the cap fills with water. Water in the lid is too heavy to keep the diver floating.

Bath Tricks
Water will spill out of a bottle if you fill it with water, put your hand on top, turn itupside down and then take your hand away.Water will not spill out of the bottle if you fill it with water, put your hand on top, turn it upside down under the water and then take your hand away.This is because the air pressure pushing down on the water in the basin is as strong as the water pressure in the bottle trying to get out, so the water in the bottle stays put.

We can get a card to stick on our bottle of water. When we turned the bottle with the card on it upside down and let go, the card didn’t fall off. Why not? Because the pressure of airpushing up on the card was as strong as the water pressure in the bottle so the water couldn't get out and the card stays put.

Water Walks Along a String
You can get water to spill sideways by pouring the water down along a string. The water holds tightly on to the string by surface tension and travels along the string instead of spilling straight down. Detergent Power
Our speed boat is floating on the water.We can break the surface tension of the water by squirting in some wash up liquid. When we do this the boat will shoot forward.
Water Races
Does water flow faster if you shake or squeeze the bottle?........….No, it doesn’t, but if flows faster if you make a tornado in the bottle by swirling the bottle of water.
Making a tornado is fun. You can make one by joining two bottles together with plumbers tape. Start the tornado by swirling the water in the top bottle. Making Boats
Does marla float or sink? Both. If it is in a ball it will sink but you can make it into a boat shape and it will float.We made boats and then when they could float we filled them with peas (passengers)Flat thin shapes with high sides seem to make the best boats.

An un-burstable balloon

Normally a balloon will burst if you prick it with a pin. We found a way to keep the balloon from bursting. If you put sticky tape on the balloon first, and then use the pin, the balloon doesn't burst at all, or it doesn't burst for a while. Our balloon didn't burst at first, but then it burst, giving us all a fright.

Red Cabbage and Acids

Teacher chopped red cabbage and put boiling water on top. The colour from the cabbage went into the water. We put this water into cups. We tried adding lemonade to one cup and wash up liquid to another. Both cups turned pink because of the acid. Soap turned the cabbage water a blue green colour so we know this soap is alkali.

Lemon turned the cabbage water pink. Lemon is acidic.

Our acids all turned the cabbage water pink or red. Our alkalis all turned the cabbage water blue or green.

Dancing Raisins

Raisins sink in water because they are so heavy….....but they dance in white lemonade.
This is because the bubbles in the lemonade stick to the raisins and make them float to the top. When the bubbles burst the raisins sink again.

Some Heat Experiments

Room 5 have been busy trying a few heat experiments. We have made spiral snakes. We coloured them and cut them out. We hung some over the radiator, beside the window, and we hung others in the middle of the room. Some of our snakes became disco dancing snakes but the others became sleepy snakes. Can you guess which were which?

That's right! The snakes over the heater move because hot air rises and move the snakes. The snakes in the middle of the room have no moving air under them so they stay still.

The next experiment we tried was holding a table tennis ball over a hair dryer. The rising hot air keeps the ball floating in the air. The experiment doesn't work with a heavy bouncy ball (too heavy for the air to lift) and with a light foam ball (too light to stay in the warm air flow so it gets knocked over very quickly).

We completed some experiments in Miss Costello's 2nd class this week.

1.We learned that warm air is lighter than cold air and therefore warm air rises and cold air comes in to take its place. This causes air currents. We made Snake Spirals and placed them above the radiators in our class. The air above the radiator is warm and rises and makes the snake spin. Come into our class for a look if you like.

2. We completed some experiments to learn more about ‘Myself’ – we took our fingerprints, checked which eye is our dominant eye and we found out about the blind spot.
We know everybody’s fingerprints are different.
We know everyone has a dominant eye and the brain can get confused as to where an object is or it may see double.

3. The Armagh Planetarium came to visit our school on the 20th of November.
We learned a lot about electricity and the planets.

Here is a space chart that the senior infants (Room 5) made.

Egg....speriments!

It is Science Week. We did a few interesting experiments in science week. We found out that eggs sink in water, but if you add salt to the water, the egg can now float.

We know why this happens......We did another experiment that is almost the same.....Put some rice into a cup and then put a bouncy ball in the cup, and fill the cup with rice (covering the ball). Now if you shake the cup the bouncy ball will always come to the top. This is because the little rice pieces are so small that they always race to the bottom of the cup first, so the ball always ends up on top. (That's why crumbs are always at the bottom of a cornflakes box!) The eggs are the same. The salt in the water always pushes to the bottom (because it makes the water dense) so the egg ends up on top. Interesting isn't it?

We did another experiment to find out if eggs are raw or cooked. We made both eggs spin and then we tried to stop them spinning. The boiled egg is very well behaved, it stops when it is told. (It's like wearing a seatbelt in the car). The raw eggs stops spinning for a second, but spins again as soon as you take your hand away (like someone without a seatbelt in the car, keeps moving forward even if the car stops in a crash). You can spin an egg to see if it is cooked or not.

Acrobatic Clowns

Room 5 had fun with clowns today (9/11/07) We coloured some clowns and put coins on their hands. Without coins the clowns couldn't balance but when we put the coins on the clowns would balance anywhere..on our hands, on our noses and even on the top of a pencil!

3,2,1, Blast Off

Today Senior Infants Room 5 were talking about air. We tried to get a balloons to fly in a straight line. They never do. When you blow up a balloon and then let them go they fly in all directions.
We finally got a balloon to fly in a straight line by attaching the balloon to a string with a straw and some selotape. This time the balloon flew in a straight line. We even got the balloon to fly uphill and downhill by having one end of the string higher than the other.

Winter Trees

Senior Infants Room 5 went on a nature walk today to see trees in Winter. We saw evergreen and decidious trees. The decidious trees have lost their leaves now. The evergreen trees don't lose leaves in winter. We also saw black buds on the Ash tree and sticky brown buds on the Horse Chestnut tree.

Electrics in Room 5

On October 24th, 2007, Room 4 and Room 5 got together for a session on Electricity. First of all we talked about the sun and the moon, and night and day.

After that we talked about staying safe with electricity (plugs, kites, wires etc.).

Next teacher gave every pair of students a bulb, a battery and two wires and we had to make a circuit to get the bulb lighting. That wasn't too hard, but then teacher took away one wire and we had to get the bulb lighting.

When we were good at this we made our own lighthouses out of kitchen rolls, bulbs, bulb holders, batteries, wires and yoghurt pots. We are very proud of our lighthouses.