ingridscience

Egg into bottle

Summary
Use gas pressure to pull a hard boiled egg into a bottle.
Science topic (2005 curriculum connection)
Physical Science: Force and Motion (grade 1)
Materials
  • hard boiled egg
  • glass bottle
  • lighter and small piece of paper
Procedure

Light the paper and drop it into the bottle.
As it goes out place the egg on the top of the bottle.

As the air in the bottle cools again and contracts, the low pressure in the bottle pulls the egg into it.

Grades taught
Gr 4

Chickens, eggs and feathers

Summary
Look at live chickens, then their eggs and feathers.
Curriculum connection (2005 science topic)
Life Science: Needs of Living Things (grade 1)
Life Science: Animal Growth and Changes (grade 2)
Procedure

Do the chicken observation to get students talking about them and discussing their features. Frame in terms of adaptations
Discuss why we keep chickens - for their eggs.
Discuss what chickens eat. Feed chickens (dig them worms if possible).

Do egg structure study.
Discuss why the eggs are not fertilized - as there is no rooster. Remind students that humans make eggs too.

Optional: weigh a chicken
Weigh a person holding a chicken, then weigh the person alone. Students figure out to do subtraction to find the weight of the chicken.

Do the feather study.

With extra time end with fun activities involving eggs:
Egg in the bottle activity.
Egg drop challenge. (Use any materials to wrap an egg so that it does not crack when dropped from a height.)

Grades taught
Gr 4

Air pressure rocket (demonstration)

Summary
Make a rocket powered by air pressure. This is a powerful rocket and requires strict supervision.
Science topic (2005 curriculum connection)
Physical Science: Force and Motion (grade 1)
Materials
  • 2 litre soda bottle
  • support sticks and duct tape, better a stand

    • cork, drilled to hold ball pump needle, plus some hollowing out to allow air contact all the way through

  • bike pump with ball pump needle
  • water
Procedure

Prepare the rocket by drilling through the cork.

Add water to the rocket, insert the cork containing the needle attached to the pump.
Put it in the stand/stand upright.
Ask everyone to stand well back, as it will take off with no warning at high speed.
Pump air into the rocket until it takes off.

The pressure of air in the bottle above the water increases until it is too high to be held in by the cork.
As the cork flies out, the water flies out too, helping project the rocket higher.

Experiment with amount of water for the best flight.
Too much water means there is too much weight. Too little means there is not so much water shooting out to project the rocket higher.

Lots of great explanation, plus how to construct on the Naked Scientists website: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/experiments/exp/water-rockets/

Notes

I made a stable stand from a plant pot.

Grades taught
Gr 4

Rockets

Summary
Shoot off rockets powered by gas pressure, generated by various means.
Curriculum connection (2005 science topic)
Physical Science: Force and Motion (grade 1)
Procedure

Choose two activities for a lesson.

Shoot off film canister rockets.
Discuss the chemistry and the gas pressure that builds up and sends it upwards.
Set off the more powerful baking soda and vinegar rocket as a demonstration, which uses the same mechanism.

Instead of making the gas pressure from a chemical reaction, a chamber can be compressed to increase gas pressure: air pressure rocket (very powerful - be careful) or stomp rocket.

Discover chemistry that makes real rockets fly.

Energy transformations in rockets.
Baking soda and vinegar/Alka seltzer rockets use chemical energy into motion energy.

Grades taught
Gr 4

Combustion of ethanol in a jug

Summary
Burn ethanol in a jug to make a blue flame and a sound.
Science topic (2005 curriculum connection)
Physical Science: Light and Sound (grade 4)
Physical Science: Chemistry (grade 7)
Materials
  • large heat proof flask or jug
  • 95% ethanol
  • long handled lighter
  • safety goggles and a good distance between the activity and students
Procedure

Add a little ethanol to the jug.
Swirl it around to coat the sides and evaporate into the volume of the flask.
Ignite at the top.

Discuss the chemistry of the reaction:
ethanol + oxygen -> water and CO2
Model the chemistry of the combustion reaction

Grades taught
Gr 4
Gr 5

Combustion of a ping pong ball

Summary
Light a ping pong ball on fire, and discuss the chemistry.
Science topic (2005 curriculum connection)
Physical Science: Chemistry (grade 7)
Materials
  • ping pong ball
  • lighter
  • heat proof tray
  • outdoors
Procedure

Light the ping pong ball and watch it burn.

The ping pong ball is fuel for a combustion reaction: it combines with oxygen to release heat and light. Carbon dioxide and water are made, along with an ash.

Once the combustion reaction starts, the heat it generates keeps the reaction going.

Grades taught
Gr 4

Molecular modelling of combustion of ethanol

Summary
Use molecule models to figure out the chemical reaction of combustion.
Science topic (2005 curriculum connection)
Physical Science: Chemistry (grade 7)
Materials
    molecule pieces for combustion of ethanol:
  • ethanol molecule: two black carbons, one red oxygen, six white hydrogens, eight grey bonds
  • three oxygen molecules: each two red oxygens, 2 grey bonds

    • molecule pieces for combustion of hydrocarbon:

  • methane molecule: one black carbon, four white hydrogens, four grey bonds
  • two oxygen molecules: each two red oxygens, 2 grey bonds
Procedure

Either build the starting molecules, or ask students to make them: one ethanol molecule and three oxygen molecules.

Tell/remind students that ethanol is a fuel that burns in oxygen, and that when the fuel and oxygen chemically react their atoms come apart and recombine into new molecules.
One of those new molecules is water (H2O), and it makes three of them.
Ask students to pull apart their ethanol and oxygen molecules, and rearrange them to make three water molecules.
Then tell them that the remaining atoms and bonds make the other reaction product. There are two identical molecules of this second product.
Give them time to use up all the remaining atoms and bonds to make two identical molecules. With time, they should arrive at CO2, or carbon dioxide.

So when ethanol (or other fuels) burn in oxygen the reaction products are water and carbon dioxide.
Sometimes carbon (as soot) is also made, when not all the carbon combines with oxygen (called incomplete combustion).

Additional information on the flames that are often present during combustion:
The flame is a mixture of hot gases, primarily CO2, water vapour, oxygen and nitrogen (nitrogen comes from other materials that burn).
Energy in the flame excites the electrons in some of the transient reaction intermediates such as the Methylidyne radical (CH) and Diatomic carbon (C2), which results in the emission of visible light (blue and green for these radicals) as these substances release their excess energy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame

Grades taught
Gr 4

Combustion

Summary
Do a series of activities involving combustion - a chemical reaction with oxygen that gives off heat.
Curriculum connection (2005 science topic)
Physical Science: Chemistry (grade 7)
Procedure

Define combustion: when a fuel reacts with oxygen, giving off heat.
A source of heat is needed to initiate combustion, and once it has started, it self sustains from the heat it produces.

Do the candle activity, or the jug, or both.

Using molecule models, students figure out the products of combustion.
With the candle and the jug, water condensate is found around the reaction site.

Candle see saw for more candle activities.

Optional: challenge students to light a campfire - what do they need? Fuel (paper then wood), oxygen (fire built properly to pull oxygen through it) and heat (lighter to start it).
Do flame colours in the campfire with copper sulphate, or on a camp stove.

Add other activities if time, reminding students that the fuel (whether candle wax, firewood, ping pong ball plastic or ethanol) reacts with oxygen to release carbon dioxide and water.

Grades taught
Gr 4
Gr 5

Lasers

Summary
A series of activities using lasers - fun!
Curriculum connection (2005 science topic)
Physical Science: Properties of Objects and Materials (grade K)
Physical Science: Light and Sound (grade 4)
Materials
  • a dark room
  • materials listed in the activities
Procedure

Do the activities in turn.

Grades taught
Gr 4
Gr 5

Laser beam in a stream of water

Summary
Shine a laser beam through a stream of water, and it will follow the curve of the water flow as it reflects inside the stream.
Materials
  • empty water bottle, with a small hole punched lower than midway down
  • pocket laser
  • dark room
Procedure

Fill the bottle with water, with a finger over the hole, and hold it over a sink.
Let the water stream out of the hole. Ask a student to shine the laser through the bottle and into the start of the stream.
The laser light will be reflected from the sides of the inside of the stream, so it stays inside the stream of water even as it curves, so lighting up the water stream. There is a point where the stream curves too steeply for the internal reflection to continue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifbCsha7Syc

Grades taught
Gr 4
Gr 5
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