Wood and Water

We have been busy this week with our Materials in Our World unit of study.  We started the week exploring wood and water.  We discovered that water can sometimes change the color of wood.  We also learned that some types of wood absorb water quickly, while others repel water.  We had a fun experience learning how to use eye droppers, too.  Scientists have to observe, compare and report on their findings.  

   

We put drops of water on five different types of wood…basswood, cedar, pine, plywood and particleboard.

   

   

You have to be really patient while you are observing!

Next, we tried to see if wood would sink or float.  We thought for sure it would sink…after all, heavy things sink.  We were wrong...

   

Like all good scientists, we needed to know more.  How could we get the samples of pine and plywood to sink?  We added weight to the wood samples!  We added paperclips to the samples and secured them with a rubber band.  How many paper clips do you think it would take?

   

We discovered that we needed to add 20 paper clips to the sample of pine to get it to sink and only 10 to the sample of plywood to get it to sink.  We decided plywood must be heavier than pine.  Now it was time to record our findings so we can report them to our readers!

   

We did some community writing first, then added our new learning to our materials journals.