Does colour affect taste?

We did an experiment today to see if colour affects how something tastes. Mr Marquand told us he was just seeing if we could tell what flavour each of the drinks were. We did not know that they were both lemon and lime but one had food colouring in. Nine of us thought that the red drink was some sort of berry drink. About 5 people did think they were the same. This shows that for some people colour definitely does affect how they taste a flavour - interesting! Does this mean that if we dye our peas blue they will taste like blueberries?

Lower Waipa Cross Country

Awesome running today guys. I could see all of you were nervous which is OK as it helps you stay focused. Congratulations to those who came through fast enough to go on to the full primary cross country.

Imploding can

Today we did an experiment which made a can implode - exciting! We put a small amount of water in the bottom of a can and boiled it for 30 seconds. We then tipped the can upside down into a bowl of icy cold water and it imploded. We had lots of discussion around why this happened. The air in the can expanded as it heated up and when we put it in the cold water it rapidly cooled down the air which contracted and pulled the can in with it. I wonder what would happen with a tin can or a can made out of  titanium?

We also observed how warm air expands by putting a bottle with a balloon over the top in hot water. The balloon blew up as the air in the bottle got warm.

School Cross Country

A massive effort today guys. You can all be proud of yourselves. I saw some of you push yourselves really hard and many achieved personal bests - well done. A big congratulations to the place getters - you inspire us!

Some more science investigations

These are some experiments from our learning about density. We discovered what liquids were denser than others by the way they floated at different layers. We also suspended an egg in a glass by creating a liquid which it floats on (salt water) and putting a liquid (water) less dense than the egg on top of the salt water. Density is how compacted the atoms and molecules are in matter.

We asked the question if color affects the burn time of candles. Our experiment didn't give us a clear answer so we decided we would need to do an experiment using a greater number of candles and colors.

Another experiment we did to help learn the scientific investigation process was investigating what solutions would clean a tarnished coin. Coke and vinegar were clear winners in this so pull out your old coins and begin cleaning!

In this experiment with Mrs Graham our Bible in Schools teacher we learnt about physical changes. The small dense gummy bears when put in water dramatically changed size as they absorbed the water surrounding them. A physical change is a change when no chemical change happens, only physical changes such as state or shape.

Fractions and percentages

In maths we have been focusing on fractions. Some of us have been learning to find the fraction of a number as Dan explains in the above video. He shows it by counting out the groups. We have also been learning how to use our times tables to make this process quicker.

Today one of our groups was learning to find out the price of an item with the sale percentage taken off. e.g. 30% off some $75 shoes. We learnt to use an easy benchmark percentage like 10% to help work it out. So 10% off $75 is $7.50 but because it is 30% we need to times $7.50 by 3 which equals $22.50. We then take this amount off $75 which gives us the final price of $52.50.

The last of our maths groups has been learning to visualize fractions to help decide which fractions are bigger. We are also learning to use benchmark fractions like 1/2 to help us in this, e.g. In deciding if 8/14 is bigger than 1/2 we know that 7/14 would be a half so 8/14 is bigger than a half.

Stinky fish hands

We all know that getting fish smell off our hands can be difficult so we did an experiment to find out the best way to get the smell off our hands. We are learning about the scientific process and so are using this experiment to learn the process.

We tried water, soap, detergent, vinegar, toothpaste, baking soda, lemon and salt. Most people had a hypothesis that the vinegar would be the most effective. However, surprisingly, after the smell test it was the detergent that got the most votes. We will now talk about the variables in this experiment and if it was a fair test or not.

One massive snapper!

We were lucky enough to get hold of a massive snapper (thank you Fish City). We used it to do all sorts of learning such as dissecting its eye, estimating and measuring its weight (12 kg) and length (82 cm), researching facts about it and grouping the information into paragraphs, identifying it's anatomy and an experiment to discover the best way to remove fish smell from hands.

A number of our estimates were reasonably close to the actual weight, but most of our length estimates were too short. Dissecting the eye was quite difficult as it was messy and hard to cut through. We did recognize from our diagram the lens of the eye - a little round clear ball. In our research we looked for some records in size and weight of snapper. We got a number of different answers which showed us the importance of triangulating search results to ensure the information we get is accurate.

We have now buried the fish and will dig it up in a few months to observe the rates of decomposition of different parts of the fish.

How heavy is a plane?

This morning we did some learning and practice with measuring temperature and weight. We needed practice in estimating as well as understanding other things like reading a thermometer. Understanding gross weight (Tin can and soup) and net weight (just the soup) was new learning for many of us. It would be great if some of you did some more estimating and researching the weight of bigger objects like cars and planes!

Science Wonderings Wall

Created with Padlet

What is matter?

Today we asked the question what is matter? We learnt that matter is anything that takes up space (has mass) and weighs something. We explored the properties of air and discovered that air is matter.

These are a couple of the experiments that helped us see that air takes up space.

We sucked all the air out of the bag which shrink wrapped Breanna and Lars. All the air on the outside moved in to fill the space. Finn tried to blow up a balloon in a bottle but couldn't because the air inside the bottle couldn't move away for the balloon to expand. Also here is a link to the smoke rings video we watched which shows air movement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VL0M0jmu7k 

Through this experiment we observed that air does weigh something. We created some balanced scales and then let the air out of one balloon. As you can see, air does weigh something.