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Science theme week: January 2009

 

 Science theme week: January 2009

 

 Our science theme week began when twelve very strange but friendly pirates arrived, singing their pirate song, in assembly time and presented each class with a science problem to solve.

 

 Problems included ‘How much salt is in sea water?’ and the children were given until the end of the week to answer the question and give a presentation about the problem.
 


A3 Science Theme Week January 2009

We were issued a challenge from two pirates, Captain Jim and Scar Face. We had a problem on board our ship as our drinking water kept disappearing. The pirates insisted no one had drunk any without permission nor had any one tipped some away. They needed our keen scientific brains to work out what was happening and how we could prevent it from occurring.

 

We decided to see what would happen if water and other different liquids, were left in the classroom over a few days. We found out that indeed all the liquids disappeared and we learnt that all liquids do evaporate. We learnt about molecules and the theories of the three states of matter from a science workshop and a dvd from BBC Science Clips. We then learnt how the evaporation rate can be increased if more heat is added and if there is moving air above the liquid. We decided that these facts could help us reduce evaporation. We thought about other factors that could effect evaporation; shape of the container, adding a lid (did the type of material make a difference to the evaporation rate?), the number of holes in a lid and putting it near a source of heat.

 

In groups we investigated each factor that we believed could affect evaporation rates. We thought about the question we needed to ask and how we were going to test this. We thought carefully about our variable and how to make our test fair. We needed to record our results and find the difference between the amount of water we started with in each container to what was left. This then gave us the quantity of what had been evaporated.

 

                                                                        
We found out that the ideal container to prevent evaporation is as follows and we told the pirates what they should do.
                                                                                

The Year 5 children solved the problem and saved Mrs Harris and Miss Humphreys from having to walk the plank!