Sinking Pine and Plywood

After learning that our wood samples did not sink when we placed them in a tub of water, we started to think about what would make the samples sink.  We decided that we needed to add weight to them to make them sink.  But how?  Easy!  We used rubber bands, paperclips and two types of wood samples…pine and plywood.

We already knew that the wood samples would float.  We started by putting five large paper clips on each of the samples of pine and plywood and attached them with a rubber band.  We placed them in the water and...

…they still floated.  So we added five more paper clips to each wood sample.  This time...

…they both floated again!  We needed to add more weight so we added five more paperclips to each of the wood samples.  This time...

…the plywood sank to the bottom of the tub but the pine did not!  Now what?  We added five more paper clips to the pine sample.  And this time...

…the pine sample sank.  We discovered that the plywood is heavier.  It needed 15 paperclips to sink but the pine is lighter because it needed 20 paperclips to sink.

We keep adding to our Materials Vocabulary list, too.