What an awesome morning we had, continuing our explorations of density and our sink or float investigations. We kicked off our week by following the scientific method. We asked a question (Will it sink or will it float?), made predictions (hypotheses), conducted experiments, made observations, and discussed our conclusions (what we learned).
We then started discussing density: What is it? Can we see it? How does density make something sink or float in water? We used bingo stampers to show what density looks like: lots of dots very close together means more dense, and dots that are farther apart are less dense.
We experimented with all kinds of objects that we found around our classroom. This morning we got to test out our hypotheses/predictions with our guests!
Then, we progressed to asking if we can change the density of water so that an object that previously sank would now float. We tested it out with an egg (an egg-cellent egg-speriment, if you will). We discovered that eggs will sink in water. We talked about how we can try to change the density of water by adding something to the space between the “dots” (from our density art). We poured in some salt, and let it dissolve and the egg… SANK! So we added more salt. LOTS. And the egg still sank! Because we are great scientists, we didn’t get discouraged, and we didn’t give up! After our guests left, we added EVEN MORE SALT and finally…. The egg FLOATED!!!!
If you’d like to recreate the egg-speriment at home, we highly recommend using a tall glass.
The inspiration for our experiments came from learning about the story of Passover, when baby Moses floated in a basket along the river. We also noticed that we were using salt water for our egg-speriment, just like we have salt water at our seder! JK didn’t want the experiments to stop, so, tomorrow they will be bringing a package to use at home. Send us your photos or comment below so we can share with the class!
