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Campus, chemistry

Christmas Science

January 30, 2016 Ailie Rankin Leave a comment

At christmas time the learning continued (you may have noticed the onset of the season in some of the previous posts’ pictures).

It was only right that the science that we explored be linked to not only the previous sessions but also the festivities – helping us all to apply the learning in a meaningful context.

Building on our observations of the changing state of the foam from the Elephant’s toothpaste, we looked at changing states again but of sugar, in the form of candy canes.

We considered what happens to candy when you leave it in your mouth for a wee while. Then considered the results of different solutions – hot water, cold water, carbonated water, vinegar or oil.

The previous experiences influenced our predictions.

Put it in vinegar - it'll make bubbles. — Put it in vinegar – it’ll make bubbles.

"I think it's going to make rain!" — “I think it’s going to make rain!”

"It's going to be bright like a sun!" — “It’s going to be bright like a sun!”

"They will go red"[the liquids] "Carbonated water first, vinegar last" — “They will go red”[the liquids] “Carbonated water first, vinegar last”

So Matthew guessed the differences in the liquids would affect the candy canes the same way but over different times, most children predicted the candy canes would react the same way in all the solutions. But Mathew was closest.

We think and talk about our predictions.

We popped one candy cane each into testubes of different solutions.

We ran out of candy canes for the afternoon so had to check the pieces we used were about the same size.

We wanted to have ownership of the different test tubes in the afternoon so we could almost make it a competition!

We had to wait a while.

We took notes and recorded our findings.

We closely observe!

It took a little while.

We had to be patient.

The solutions in some of the test tubes began to change

We lifted the canes up and out every now and again to check on them.

The clour of the liquids changed.

The canes are all different sizes!

Kerr’s liquid changed colour.

“The water’s all pink!”

We agitated the mixture by shaking it to see if it changed the process.

Some of the candy canes had gotten a lot thinner! They had disolved!

The canes are all different sizes!

“Look it’s wee!”

“It’s snapped! The hot water one broke!”

We laid the left over canes out side by side so that we could compare them more easily.

The canes had changed a lot, they were quite different.

We talked about what we thought had happened.

The hot water seemed to have had the most effect.

The candy cane that had been in the hot water had almost disolved completely. The oil one hadn’t changed at all.

“The oil one will never change” Ramsay

We were quite intrigued about the differences and the disolving and so we came up with ideas of other things we could try the candy canes in.

Emily chose milk and predicted. “It’ll turn the milk pink”

It did but the cane hardly disolved in the time it took hot water to work.

Eilidh chose bubble bath and predicted a pink cloud.

We used lots of descriptive and comparative language when we looked at more than one test tube.

Erin tried orange juice and predicted a change in colour.

“A cloud! A cloud! It’s making a wee pink cloud!”

Only Emily’s disolved in any noticable way, although they were all very very sticky which suggest the process started with them all in some way.

So now we know: sugar disolves in water but not oil, and the temperature of the water can speed up or slow down the process.

We also know science doesn’t need to stop at Christmas! You can always investigate H2Ho Ho Ho!

(Too far?)

For more easy science why not check out Pinterest.

Or Happy Hooligans has some fun ideas also.

Don’t forget to leave a comment or share your experiment and learning with us!

Happy experimenting

Science blog from the children and staff of Kelly St. Children's Centre.

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