Our inquiry this term is on the material world and we started off by looking at whether a box with no object in it is actually empty. Is air something or nothing? We learnt that 'matter' is the world all around us. We can tell if something is matter by whether it, TAKES UP SPACE and WEIGHS SOMETHING. So we tested this with air and found that, yes, it does take up space and it does weigh something. Here is a video of some of the things that helped us learn this. Sophie helped us see that it is impossible to blow up a balloon in a bottle as the air in the bottle has nowhere to go. We shrink wrapped some students to explore how air takes up space and we used some balloons to see if air weighs anything.
Wonderings: I wonder if there are places with no matter at all? Does air weigh the same when it is polluted? Or hot?
We have also had a great discussion around which of these (below) are matter and which are not. The ones that really got us thinking were smell, electricity, anger, heat, and a shadow. A great discussion for helping us understand what is matter and what is energy.
We are going to explore all sorts of other things about the material world, including zooming into the particle level of atoms and molecules.
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