Monday 31 January 2011

Things of a very vaguely scientific nature

Youngest daughter keeps asking to do "experiments".  Recently, we investigated ice and melting using an idea from a DK science book, "In the Garden".


I've been really impressed by some of the ideas in the book but this idea around freezing and melting was particularly good-home ingredients, little mess and results that were fun to observe.

We half filled a muffin tray with water. We used tap water although the book suggests rain water. I didn't know how long I would have to wait for rain. We then put in pieces of flower and leaves in the water and a loop of string in each hole.


The flowers have strange tints as they were previously used to look at transport in plants, using coloured water.

The muffin container went in the freezer for half a day, we took out the finished product and hung it outside and talked about how long it would take to melt.


This current interest, probably stemmed from our cell model using jelly for cytoplasm, a truffle for the nucleus and various other sweets for other organelles. Thank you to Apologia for this idea.

7 comments:

  1. Those look so pretty on the tree!
    Not sure i would want to eat a cell though! But some great ideas! I may think to use them...in time!

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  2. Those frozen flowers etc would certainly brighten up our garden which looks very dull in the winter. We are supposed to get warmer weather for the next couple of days so I think I'll wait for the next cold snap :-)

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  3. These are lovely ideas! The ice sculptures are fab.

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  4. I love the frozen flowers - very clear in demonstrating changing properties. It reminded me that we used to freeze all sorts in Reception not only to demo freezing and melting but also for the kids to get 'up close' to all sorts of bits and bobs - e.g. our dead class goldfish (they loved studying him in the ice, and we made sure to chuck it before he completely defrosted!), dead insects, etc.

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  5. I love both those ideas, particularly the cell! Excellent idea!
    Thank you for sharing.

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  6. Oh wow the model cell is fantastic! That's an idea I'll have to store away for a few years. We're planning to do some ice experiments soon, hadn't thought of adding flowers so that will be a nice twist. Thanks for sharing!

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  7. Don't know which I like better, the ice flowers or the cell model. Neat!

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