What we did:
We made goop, or glorp. We think glorp should be on the periodic table under the symbol GL. We made it by mixing cornstarch with water. When you squish it, it becomes solid. When you stop squishing it, it turns to liquid.
We balanced a cup on top of a dollar.
We did this by folding the dollar and putting it across two cups.
We then put another cup on top.
What we learned:
Folding a dollar in zigzags makes it stronger, because there are more places for the weight to go.
When molecules move around a lot, you have
a gas.
When they move around a little, you have a
liquid.
When they don’t move, you have a solid.
When you hold the glorp, the molecules stop moving, and when you stop holding it, they move again. The molecules in glorp are long and coiled like spaghetti, which is why this happens.
New Questions:
Could we make colored glorp? (We think
we could, but we would have to add paint or food coloring.)
What would happen if we ate glorp? (We think
it would be fine, because it’s just ordinary food, it would just taste
gross.)
Week Two
What we did:
We used vinegar for invisible ink, and we tried to heat it to make it appear, but it didn’t work. We heated it using a light bulb, a 100-watt light bulb.
First we covered one eye and tried to throw a ball back and forth ten times to each other. After that we just threw the ball around using one eye and both eyes
What we learned
The heat was supposed to make the letters appear. This is called a physical change.
It’s hard to judge to distances with only one eye, because each eye sees things at a different angle and then your brain puts them together.
Week Three
Erik and Justin are not here.
What we did:
We put raisins in a cup of Sprite. The Sprite has carbon dioxide, which will make bubbles attach to the raisins and make them float. We had no luck. It didn’t work. The raisins just turned all pruney.
We put vinegar in an empty bottle, and we put baking soda into a balloon. We put it on top of the bottle. It made a gas balloon. The balloon blew itself up by the gas, which it made itself. The foam made it all the way to the top of the bottle, which made the gas go into the balloon.
What we learned
Today we learned that if we combine baking soda and vinegar, it makes carbon dioxide. That’s what filled the balloon. This is called a chemical change. It’s a chemical change because a chemical reaction occurs. A physical changed can be fixed, and a chemical change can’t be reversed because it makes a new substance with different molecules.
Week Four
What we did
We discussed the laws of motion. There are three. When we pushed something, eventually it pushed us back. We discussed inertia, R2D2 and sandcrawlers and the force of gravity, mass, acceleration, and force. We threw stuff and ran around backward to demonstrate acceleration.
We decided on our question, which is the use
of gases in making projectiles.
What we learned.
We learned the laws of motion.
The first one is that objects in motion stay in motion. Objections in rest must stay in rest until an external force is applied.
The second one is force. Force equals acceleration times mass. If you multiply the acceleration - how fast something’s going -times the mass you get the force. The force is how much it takes to push or move something.
The third law is every action has an equal
and opposite reaction. If I push this desk, it pushes back.
What this has to do with paintball:
The paintball accelerates when you shoot it, which means it goes faster. It has a lot of force because of the acceleration.
The force of the marker when you fire it causes a reaction which pushes your arm back.
Week Five
We made rocket using paper, and film canisters, and we put water and Alka-Seltzer in the film canisters. Then we closed it back up and there was a chemical change that turned the tablets into gas. That made the bottom of the canister pop off and the canister fly.
What we learned
Three quarters of an Alka-Seltzer tablet flew
best.
Matthew thinks that if you put two tablets in a rocket, it would go better along the ground than into the air. Lots of Alka-Seltzer didn’t work well in the air, but when my rocket went along the ground it went 4.5 meters! Erik thinks that would work because it would only be fighting friction and it wouldn’t be fighting gravity.
The rockets with fins balanced better before take off and flew straighter. The rocket without fins wobbled around after going straight up.
We saw chemical changes in action again. The carbon dioxide pushed the rocket into the air, kind of like when you shake a bottle of soda and stick your finger in it, and your finger gets pushed out.
We also saw the laws of motion in action. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. When the gas and water pushed down on the ground, the rocket got pushed up into the air.
They didn’t go as high as we expected.
Before we did the experiment Matthew thought that his rocket would go up in the air and fall on its side. That turned out to be true.
Erik thought that rockets with fins would fly straighter, and he was right.
Caitlin thought her finless rocket would fly high but not straight, which was true, mostly. It flew straight at first and then went all wobbly.
And Judy thought that rockets with fins would
twirl, but instead the rockets with fins went up and came down straight.
Week Six
What we did.
We made a car with a balloon called the Prototype Excalibur, but it didn’t move. First we made a car with pins for axles, but the wheels fell off. Then we poked bigger holes and put straws for the axles. And then we put pins on the end so the wheels on the end, but it still didn’t go.
Then we made a rocket car. The Excalibur
2.0! We built it with three engines, which were film canisters.
Then we went outside and put Alka-Seltzer and water in the film canisters.
It took a while for them to blow up. It was fun though. They
went at different times. The left engine wasn’t secure enough, so
when it blew up it detached itself and shot forward; the top of the canister
flew backward, which is action and reaction. Then we took a tiny
film canister, which we call the Youth Missile 2005, and we put one Alka-Seltzer
tablet in it and it blew up. It went about fifteen feet in the air.
The Alka-Seltzer was still on the ground. So we picked up all the
used Alka-Seltzer, including the ones from Excalibur 2.0, and put them
in Youth Missile 2005. Then it shot again, and we did it once
more. It actually went up higher the second time, by about two feet.
We think 17.5 feet. The third time it went about 16 feet.
Week 7
What we did -
First we got our old balloon car and used normal
balloons. But it didn’t work very well. It went maybe five
inches. Matthew tried putting the balloon in backwards and it went
a few inches. Matthew had a way of letting go of the balloon quickly
that worked. He tried it at least 13 times. We tried a long skinny balloon,
which took a long time to blow up. It sort of worked the first time.
It went maybe a foot, but no more. But the balloon was dragging on
the ground, so we put a ramp thing made out of paper on the car, which
lifted the balloon so it didn’t drag. The balloon kind of hung in
the air. The car worked better than before but still not too well.
Matthew went on the internet and got a few pictures of other balloon cars. Those cars were different from ours. They used different materials. We decided we would build our own with a mixture of different things. We think we should have bigger wheels, straws to blow up the balloon and for the wheels.
We went on the internet to find information about paintball. Erik
Topspin - forward spinning force placed on
a ball (When a paintball marker fires a ball, the ball has topspin.
Trajectory - curving path taken by something
sent into the air (If you fire a paintball up, it will go in a trajectory)
Soluble - dissolves in water (paintballs are
water-soluble)
Toxic - poisonous (Paintballs are non-toxic)
Biodegradable - won’t hurt the environment
(paintballs are biodegradable)
What we learned
Balloon cars - we learned that bigger balloons
work better and longer balloons work better too. It’s important that
the neck is wide open enough air can come out to project the balloon forward.
So we think we should put a straw in the neck of the balloon next time.
Week Eight
What we did:
Made ANOTHER balloon car. Cardboard base, the wheels were attached to the axels. We used Ben & Jerry’s ice cream lids for wheels. The wheels didn’t spin free, but the axles did.
We built a second car of the day which had yogurt lid wheels. We put them both down a ramp. The ice cream car went 13 1/2 tiles, and the yogurt lid car went 3 1/2 tiles. The old car from last week went less than a tile.
We took the ice cream lid car and attached a balloon to it. We blew it up with a pump, and it took 30 pumps to fill it up. Then we let it go, and it went all the way across the room and hit the wall! It went 25 tiles, and then it bounced back half a tile. We put it in the hall, and it went 27 tiles! It went 23 tiles on a second try. We used the same amount of air each time.
We put a thing to keep the neck of the balloon
straight. We flipped the end of the cardboard up, and attached two tubes
to the balloon. We taped the neck of the balloon to the flipped-up
cardboard. But it didn’t work as well as the last one; it only went
17 tiles. Matthew thinks it’s because the nozzle added weight.
Erik thinks it’s because the wheels got kind of crooked.
What we learned
What makes a good car: bigger wheels, because the wheels go farther with each turn. The ice cream wheels were nice and thick so they could support the car better.
Trial and Error works in develop
Action & Reaction: When the car hit the
wall, it bounced back about half a foot.
Week Nine
What we did:
First, there was a fire drill. Then we got to work.
We built the web site, or we started building the web site. We also made a plan – we took markers and wrote it out on a big piece of paper. We are making a home page, a journal of what we did, an experiments page, and a links page.
What we learned:
What does this have to do with paintball? Absolutely nothing. But we learned how to build a webpage, do links, changing the format, and putting in pictures.
It’s easy, you need to save a lot, and you should control-Z a lot.