Science with Trish in Term 4 (Room 8)

Today Trish came to work with us.  It was the first  of 4 sessions that we will have this term.

This term we are looking at capillary action on surface tension!Water molecules holding hands:

This is what we found out!

 

We used the little bottles to make drops on the counters.  We used 1) water and 2) washing up liquid.

Some of us managed to fit up to 24 drops of water on the counter before it spilt over the surface.

When we used the dish washing liquid to drip onto the counter we were not able to do nearly as many drops before it spilt.

Why is this?

Trish explained to us that once the dishwashing liquid was added to the water it was much harder for the water molecules to hold hands and stay together!

Next we used the felt pens on some absorbant paper towels and made patterns using a variety of different colours.  

 The we squirted the patterns with drops of water and the colours moved and started leaking and stretching out on our paper.

Look what happened here.....

Initially every 2nd container was filled with only water....but after awhile the folded paper was sucking up from the coloured water and moving it over to the next container.  Can you see how the colours started changing?

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