Well, if we are going to act and write like scientists, we need to look like scientists! We pulled out the white lab coats and safety glasses to get ready for our investigation on wood and water.
Once we were dressed and ready, we were introduced to a new science tool. This tool was an eye dropper. Many of us had seen eye droppers before, but not many of us knew how to use them. We talked about the parts of the eye dropper and spent some time practicing using them.
Our next job was to put some drops of water on samples of cedar and particleboard, using the eye dropper. Then we had to observe to see what would happen. Observing is sometimes the tricky part because you need to be very patient, you need to wait and watch!
After that, we added water to the samples of basswood, pine and plywood. Again...patience!
It was interesting to see which of the wood samples soaked in (absorbed) the water and which ones did not soak it in (repelled). The final part of the investigation was to see if any or all of the wood samples would sink if we put them in a tub off water. We predicted that the samples would sink because wood is heavy.
We were surprised to discover that initially, none of the five samples sank to the bottom of the tub of water. Within a few hours, the particleboard sample did sink to the bottom. However, even after leaving the samples sitting in the water overnight, the basswood, cedar, pine and plywood did not sink!
