Ice Experiments

It's so cold today, we decided to do ice-themed experiments. 

Firstly, "How Does The Addition of Substances Affect the Rate of Freezing Water?"

We poured out 5 cups of water and added a range of different substances.

Bearing in mind the rules of fair testing (change one thing, measure one thing and keep everything else the same) we decided to change the substance added, measure how long the water took to freeze and keep the same amount of water, amount of substance added, location in freezer and method of monitoring the experiment. We added salt, sugar, pepper and hot chocolate powder, leaving one cup as a control, with nothing added. We stirred them well and noticed that some of the substances dissolved, but some did not. Then we placed them all in the freezer, with a stirrer stick to help with the judgement of whether they were frozen or not, then we checked them every 20 minutes.

After about six hours of checking, the water with nothing added had frozen solid, as had the pepper-water. The hot choc was well on the way to being frozen and the sugar and salt solutions were slush. The children had gone to bed and I gave up checking. Those 20 minutes were coming round fast.

Sebastian found the whole ice thing a bit boring and amused himself with some building blocks instead.

I had given Sebastian a sticking task, gluing scrunched up tissue onto white paper but he soon gave up on that and Elizabeth was keen to take over. She made an interesting picture for her friend. It really is a wonder to behold. Shame I didn't photograph it really.

We also had a go at making snowflakes, using Malden salt glued onto card. I pre-drew the snowflake shapes the girls made lines of glue, then sprinkled on the salt. They look quite effective as they are but we're going to add food colouring for an added bonus tomorrow.

Later, we made a fabulous marble run and Francesca built this: