Tag Archives: air

balloons and gas

February 17, 2016 Ailie Rankin 4 Comments

Today we looked and at and thought about balloons and gas. This was a follow up to Isla’s fab question last time:

“What is gas?”

So we started with our balloon holding bicarbonate of soda on a bottle containing vinegar. We discussed what happened when we mixed these ingredients on Monday.

“The bottle fell over and it just fizzed a bit” – Alf

So the consensus of prediction was that the bottle would fall over.

The balloon inflated however, much to the children’s delight!

“Arrgh! It’s getting bigger! It’s going to explode!!” – Patrick

We squeezed and shook the balloon and bottle and thought about the bubbles (which were made by the gas) and we decided to investigate – could we make a gas?

“Yes!” – Daniel “It’ll be like a bomb and explode!” – Patrick

We had bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, effervescent tablets, carbonated water, bubble bath, conditioners, shaving foam, caster and icing sugars.

We discussed safety as usual:

“Wash hands after.” – Innes “Don’t pop the balloons!” – Alex

“Move if you think it’ll explode!” – Daniel

Again there was disagreement about how long it would take….

“25 hundred” – Daniel “Just a minute or 2” – Patrick

"It'll take THIS long" — “It’ll take THIS long”

We mixed various ingredients and had a variety of results:

“It grew bigger and bigger and exploded like a bomb! It was going EVERYWHERE!” “It was because of the gas” – Patrick

“Look at mine! It’s like lava but it’s not hot!”

In the afternoon I structured it so that we were much more scientifically looking at the gas first. The children could choose what to mix and predict if it would make a gas to inflate the balloon or not.

"It might melt our eyes!" — “It might melt our eyes!”

It fizzed and bubbled out from under the lid.

It was not good, not enough gas” – Finn

"I'm scared it'll blow up" — “I’m scared it’ll blow up”

“It was small”- Belle

“It looks like a rocket” – Isla C.

"It just made a little gas." — “It just made a little gas.”

Sophia gave us the quote of the day………

“I am OBSESSED with all this gas! It’s like a hundred billion! It’s amazing!” “How much gas are you making????”

Our star scientist award has to go to Fraser though. He was one of the first to join the experiment and nearly the last to leave at the end of the morning. He quickly realised which ingredients gave the best fizzy results and experimented with differing amounts in various containers. He really focused on developing his learning about chemical reaction and gas! Well done Fraser!

Why not have a go at some mad mixing at home to create gases and explosions? Any household and kitchen ingredients could combine to make an interesting and possibly smelly concoction! Our fizzy favourites have to be the vinegar+ bicarbonate of soda or the carbonated water + effervescent tablets + bubble bath. Let us know how you get on, share any cool pictures or results.

And remember you can find lots of science ideas on our pinterest page.

Happy experimenting!

physics, weather

Rockets and rain

February 5, 2016 Ailie Rankin 1 Comment

Well the weather didn’t listen to our plea. However, a bit of rain never stops science! It certainly didn’t dampen our spirits any.

Due to the weather we neglected our recording in our log book so this post will just be photos of the experiments themselves. Why not ask your child to share their hypothesis and conclusions with you as you share the blog?

“We need to do it outside!” said Nathan on Wednesday and that is exactly what we did. However this added a new force into the experiment – the wind! And one of the rockets had a difference too.

One of the rockets had gotten damaged and the fins had come off. How would it affect the flight?

“It’s not going to fly as good.” – Kobe

We took turns and helped one another when preparing for take off!

Most of the rockets flew really high outside. The one without fins flew less well so Kobe was right!

“My rocket is going to hit a seagull!” -Eve

The massive forces applied by the children made the rockets fly very high!

That wee dot is actually our rocket – the forces we applied had a great effect.

But the force applied by the wind was strong too and we lost one of our rockets altogether (it seemed to disappear. We couldn’t see where it went due to the rain!) And 3 rockets were blown onto the roof!

“We need a ladder!” – Heidi

“It’s not safe for a ladder. You might fall off and have to go to hospital!” – Evie

The wind exerted a force on the rocket and blew it onto the roof!

We decided to leave them for now.

Daniel took a run and jump to apply a big force and make the rocket fly high.

Believe it or not this is the best picture I could get of Zackary

So the rockets flew higher outside when there was no roof to bounce off. But the wind’s force affected the flight and the landing.

The learning wasn’t restricted to the science though. We were reinforcing sequence and order of number as we counted down to blast off. We developed our negotiation skills and used mathematical language of sequence and order when discussing who’s turn it would be,

“Can I go first?” – Evie

“Can I be second then?” – Bramble

“I’ll be third!” -Elise

“I’ll be next, I’ll be after Elise.” -Jude

We had to listen for information when we discussed the safety procedure (ensuring we were “clear for take off”). We followed instructions to go to the allocated area of the playground and stay safe inside the playground even when the rockets kept getting blown out on to the street despite the temptation to go and fetch them back. That’s not to mention the abundance of comparative size language – “higher, lower, more force, less force,” even “greater force”and as Jude said….

“I think that was a lesser force Ailie”

Ooooft it was a lot of work and not just physically!

But our next steps?

“Let’s make our own rockets to fly! We could make a new force!”

-Gracie

Hmmm a wee visit to Pinterest over the weekend may be in order.

Have a great midterm break. Our science will start again on Friday (hopefully all dried out by then 😝).

Thank you for your lovely comments. We love hearing about how you and your children are sharing learning at home. If you have any suggestions for experiments and / or improvements to the blog please get in touch.

physics

Fighting gravity

February 3, 2016 Ailie Rankin 3 Comments

Since we have explored gravity and how it effects dropped objects (the same regardless of mass) perhaps we should think about what is needed to escape gravity.

In order to do this we need to consider forces.

So we exerted forces on one another with the hula hoops, staying safe of course!

The biggest force was the one that determined the direction.

We really put our backs into exerting our forces!

Lara even used the radiator guard to help her exert more force!

But Gracie gave as good as she got and used a big force too!

But something unexpected happened! As Lara recorded on the logbook.

Lara recorded that the large force placed on the hula hoop broke it!

“We were learning about force and I had quite a lot of force (it was about 20 million) and the hula hoop burst right open!

Lara told her friends about what happened using the word "force"! — Lara told her friends about what happened using the word “force”!

Isla applied most force so she pulled Ryan toward her.

Then we thought about what kind of forces could be made to oppose gravity. Would it need to be a little force or a big force? What difference would the size of the force make? We explored this with our very own rockets!

We were in agreement with our predictions:

Elise: “We’ll need a big force”

Of course we needed to stay safe as always!

“We have to watch – it will fall!”: Caoimhe

“We need to stay on gravity.” Ross M.

“We could go somewhere else.”: Harmony

“We could wear an umbrella on our head”: Isla M.

We went with Ryan D and Gracie’s ideas though.

There was a conversation about the best way to exert the force to make the stomper rocket blast off:

Lara: “You push it like this.”[ Demonstrating with her hands].

Ross M: “No you do it with a foot.”

Caoimhe: “You need to put 2 feet on it – look” [shows the others the picture on the box].

There was some debate over the length of time the rocket would take to fly…

Harmony: “Oh ages – 100 days”

Ryan D.: “25 years”

Elyse: “22”

Ross M.: “100 minutes”

Isla M.: 1 minute

Caoimhe: “50 minutes”

It was a little faster. (In fact it was so fast that the camera couldn’t catch more than a blur!)

We used some of our numeracy skills to help us prepare for blast off. (Counting down helps children understand the sequence of numbers and is the first steps towards subtraction!)

Charlie realised that if you jumped on to the pump you could apply more force. Natalie took a run and jump to get even greater force. Then Euan worked out that he could jump from the step to use gravity to add force!