As it is Science Week, we decided to get some help from the experts! We invited Miss Mortimer and Deanna over from the Science department at Williamwood High School. They brought lots of equipment with them so that we could become scientists for the day!

We heard that sometimes scientists had to wear white coats and goggles to protect themselves when doing experiments but we were not going to be using any dangerous equipment so we didn’t need to.

The first experiment we were shown was how to make marbling on water. Miss Mortimer explained that sometimes materials were ‘attracted’ to each other and sometimes they were not and they ‘repelled’. We had found this out when we had been looking at magnets and how they worked so the children said they knew that magnets liked things that were metal but didn’t like plastic cars!
We each picked a piece of black card, and Deanna put a basin of water in front of us. She then got a ‘pipette’ which Miss Mortimer explained was what scientists use to get small droplets of liquid. Deanna used the pipette to suck up some clear nail varnish and drop it on the water.

The nail varnish didn’t mix into the water, instead it sat on the top and made a sheen on the surface of the water! The children all got a turn to place their black card onto the nail varnish sheen and gently press the card into the water. When we lifted the card out, it was all shiny. We enjoyed doing this and all said we wanted to do it again using different colours of nail varnish.

The second experiment was AMAZING! Miss Mortimer explained that liquids moved about and that they fitted the shape of a container but she said that a solid didn’t, she told us our table was a solid. She then said there are things called gases and sometimes we have gas in our tummy that needs to escape!
Miss Mortimer and Deanna got a beaker of water and added food colouring. We chose blue. Then, we added some oil to the beaker. The oil did not mix into the water, instead it rose up to the top of the beaker and sat on top of the water.

Deanna then added a magic tablet (alka seltzer!) and we started to see some bubbles, the bubbles were the gases trying to escape! We could see the blue water bubbling up through the oil just like magic. We all took a turn of squeezing the pipette into the liquid to make our own bubbles. It was great fun.

We had the best morning being scientists. We loved our visit from Williamwood High School and can’t wait for them to come again. Why don’t you try creating these fun experiments at home, and if you know of any others then please let us know!