Five Cent Challenge & Paper Clip Float

Cohesion.  Surface Tension.

Not phrases you would necessarily think would be thrown around a second grade classroom.

My personal grasp of these concepts is borderline shaky.  Luckily, I've got 16 resident scientists at my beck and call.  When I say that we're going to figure out what a molecule really is, we figure it out.  We do it together.  We do a lot of drawing on white boards.  We do a lot of speculation.  We throw in some analogies to imagine exactly how miniscule these molecules are.

Above all, we listen to the ideas being thrown out.  We improve upon them.  We keep improving.

And then we try it out for ourselves.

How many drops of water do you think a nickel can hold?  Julia and Kevin are testing it out in 3 trials.  The water molecules are sticking together.  This is cohesion.  Many drops pool together atop that tiny coin.  Molecules are small, but mighty.

 

Later on, we take a crack at surface tension.  How does it feel to take your palm and gently rest it on top of the water?  We think it feels almost as if the water is supporting it.  We think it feels almost as if the water has "skin".  That's surface tension.  Those molecules are doing incredible feats again.

Charleston adds another paper clip to our water float.  We are impressed with this surface tension.

Of course, none can call herself or himself a scientist without proper notes and documentation.  I mean that!  We utilize our science field journals as if they are going out of style.  I love these little notebooks.  They are full of charts, graphs, scientific writing, and other great stuff for this bright bunch to look back on someday.


Someday.  Like when they're in high school, and a teacher starts talking about cohesion.

It's a stretch, I know that it is.  But I really hope that they think back to our experiments.

Look out, MIT.