Ice Cream, Balloons, and Density
/Our study of matter and chemistry is in full force! Last Friday our scientists mixed solid and liquid ingredients to create ice cream by hand. They used ice and rock salt to achieve a temperature cold enough to turn a liquid mixture into a solid ice cream. Yum! This week we continued to explore chemical reactions during our balloon bottle experiments. We tried mixing different materials to create a release of CO2 gas, which filled up our balloons. Some of the materials like yeast, warm water, and sugar released CO2 slowly and the balloon took a long time to fill with air. Others like Coke and Mentos created a quick release of CO2 which led to the balloon quickly filling with air. Today during our science time we began exploring the concept of density. We made predictions and tested a variety of objects to see whether they would sink or float in water. The objects that were less dense than water, such as plastic blocks, floated. The objects that were denser than water, like the coins, sank to the bottom. It was interesting for students to see that objects of the same size can have very different densities; like a ping pong ball and a golf ball. Many students were surprised that the wooden blocks floated. Even though the blocks seemed heavy, the matter in the blocks was spread out and the blocks were less dense than the water. Tomorrow we will continue to explore the concept of density with liquids.
