Science Club - Floating Eggs

Last week we discovered that we could make eggs float in water, so then we wondered, "Could we make eggs float in air?"   

We taped an egg on to a balloon - but it sank quickly to the ground smashing the egg.  We even tried throwing eggs up really high into the air to catch the breeze . . . but again no luck.

Then we tried a magnet . . .

But the results were not very successful.

Then we thought of things that can float on air - like aeroplanes.  Sometimes people even jump OUT of planes and they float . . . using a parachute.  This was the next thing to try.

We worked in small groups of three to make our parachutes.  We stored them on the Science wall ready for testing next week - WATCH THIS SPACE.

Room 23 meets the beach

You might be fooled when you next go to Room 23 - is it a beach? Is it a classroom? Or is it (very cleverly) both?  Plenty of shells and other sea shore finds to look at and touch.

New caterpillar condos

People (both young and not so young) will be pleased, and no doubt not a little relieved, that we have twelve fresh swan plants (or as our caterpillars see them, brand new condos) for our remaining ravenous caterpillars.

Many thanks to the thoughtful parents who offered to rehouse some of our Monarch caterpillars and kindly took them home to their gardens.

Science professional development

Cockle Bay is an integral part of the Botany LCN Science cluster to which eleven schools in the local area contribute.  We conduct PD sessions once a term, rotating around different schools in the network.  Term 1's PD (professional development) session was hosted by Cockle Bay.

Science Club - Sea week

Week 5 was Sea week so we investigated an important property of sea water, its salinity.  First we (carefully) dropped an egg into tap water.  Then we took it out, stirred in  20gms of salt and dropped the egg back into the water.  In some cases the egg floated up halfway in the water.  After that, we removed the egg again but this time we stirred in 80gms of salt to beaker.  This time most people found that their egg floated on the top of the water.  

We recorded our results so we could recall what happened and compare our findings to those of others, using our diagrams as evidence.

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Monarch butterfly garden

We have converted the tub outside Room 19 into a Butterfly Garden.  Come and have a look at the Monarch caterpillars as they grow bigger and bigger.

To keep the caterpillars safe, we counted only with our eyes, not our hands. 

After we had planted the swan plants, we searched for caterpillars.  We had to use our eagle eyes and magnifying glasses because some of the baby ones were less than one centimetre long. We counted 22 altogether.

First we spread the new garden soil evenly over the garden.  We checked that is was 3 centimetres all over using our rulers.

Then we spread the sheep pellets evenly over the new soil.  We measured the garden with a metre ruler and found that it was 1 metre wide and 2 1/2 metres long. Mrs Bear bought a 8kg bag of sheep pellets to make the soil super healthy for the swan plants.  Some strong people lifted it up to see how heavy 8 kilogram felt.  The instructions on the bag said we had to use 2 kg of pellets for each square metre so we used 5 kg.  Mrs Bear said that there was enough left over the make some tasty sheep pellet sandwiches, but we said that was OK, we would keep them to use in our next garden instead. 

Science Club - investigating how water can refract light

We found that the arrow drawn on paper and placed behind a beaker seemed to change direction when water was added!  (The water bent, or refracted, the light and our brains couldn't understand it so explained it as real magic - scientists know it is really just an everyday  example of refraction.

Feelie box

Use a feelie box to test your sense of touch!

Try and guess what the mystery object is by feeling it. 

Afterwards, check if you were right - acorn (BINGO!)

Finding the horizon

Stick a thread across a cardboard tube to work out a horizontal line.  Hold the tube at right angles, up and down, to find the vertical.

Deadly struggle over Howick

We looked closely at the dragonfly Mrs Taylor brought to school.  Inside the mandibles  was a  wasp. 

Science Club - monitoring UV light rays using UV beads

First we threaded UV beads onto pipe cleaners.We found the UV beads stayed white when we exposed them to the classroom lights.

However, the UV beads turned bright colours when exposed to the sun.  They are made of a chemical which changes colour in the presence of UV rays.  People's skin changes colour too, from  brown or even red if we are exposed to the sun for too long a time.

We placed some UV beads into a plastic bag and smothered it in 30+ sunscreen.  We found that the UV beads changed from white to very subdued colours when they were protected by a layer of sunscreen.  Next time, we will experiment with 50+ sunscreen to see if that blocks out 100% of harmful UV rays.

Leaf Maths

We made diagrams of leaves around the school and measured them using our  centimetre rulers. 

Cicada Maths

First we counted cicadas in ones.

Our first challenge was to collect 100 cicadas.

We sorted these into tens canisters with 10 cicadas in each one.

We sorted the cannisters into tens to make tubs of 100 cicadas.

This is what 1,769 cicadas look like.

CBS worm farms

The school's worm farms break down food scraps and make valuable worm wee to treat our gardens to a 'tonic'.  View our CBS gardens in Summer on the Gardens page.

Science Club - Tin can telephones

We had to pull the string taut so that it would vibrate when we spoke into the can - this is how the sound waves moved  along the string.

We found that the plastic margarine tub did not work as well as the tin cans so we changed this telephone as soon as someone brought another can from home for us to recycle into a phone.

Science Club - Parts of a Flower

We had to disassemble the flowers to find all the main parts.

We found some interesting insects inside some of the flowers.