Pencaitland Primary Blog

We started our new topic this week  - looking at solids, liquids and gases.  Earlier this week we were making mindmaps in groups.  We’ve started to pool our ideas together now and are making a large mindmap display on the classroom wall.  We’ll use this to track our progress. 

We have carried out some experiments to investigate the changes that occur when materials are mixed or change state.

Firstly we investigated the proportions of icing sugar to water which were needed to make the perfect icing -  not too runny and not too solid!  We tried different amounts of sugar and water before we discovered the ideal recipe. We saw how the mixture changed consistency as we added different amounts of each ingredient.

Today we looked at creating a solid from a gas -  we didn’t think we’d be able to do this at the start of the lesson! We crushed up some ice, and put this in a beaker with some salt.  We mixed this together then left it over break.  When we came back ice had formed around the outside of the beaker - we learned that the salt makes the temperature of the ice fall and makes water vapour in the air which freezes into a solid on the outside of the cup. We scraped some of the ice onto a spoon and almost immediately it melted into water.

We have also looked quickly at evaporation.  We hung wet hankies in both a warm place by the window and a cool place in the cupboard. Some of us guessed correctly and said that the hankies in the warm place would dry faster.

Some of our photos and comments are below

Today in science we had to try to make some icing. We used 3 heaped spoons of sugar and one spoon of water. it was just perfect.

By CATHERINE .P AND CAITLIN.O 

40 spoons of sugar and 15 waters for our first attempt. For our second we had 40 spoons of sugar and 10 of water the second was better.

BY STEWART AND CLOE JO 

30 spoons of icing sugar will make perfect icing sugar is what we found out yesterday.  Using only spoons and cups of water and icing sugar we found a successful way to make icing sugar. Unfortunately Alasdair and me did not get it right I suspect because we put in too much water.  A successful group put in 4 spoonfuls in theirs but we put in 10 spoonfuls of water in. Plus we put in 30 spoons of icing sugar.  Apart from that it was great.  Alasdair and me really enjoyed it and I look forward to future experiments.By George and Alasdair.  

I made icing with icing sugar water a spoon a cup and palettes the icing sugar was a solid then turned into a liquid the answer was 10 to 1.Me and Harry predicted that it was 1 bits of water 6 bits of sugar  By jack t and Harry k. 

We used water, a spoon, cup and icing sugar. I got a cup that James and Euan  did earlier. I put 21 scoopfuls of icing sugar in to it .it was the right substance it was good fun

   By  Rory ,  James  and Euan

Catherine and Hannah M said they liked guessing what was going to happen when they mixed the ice with salt.  They were keen to get back from break to see what had happened.

Henry, Joe, Natasha and Chloe-Jo all enjoyed carrying out the ice experiment, especially crushing the ice and mixing in the salt.

Ellis liked checking the hankies to see if they were wet or dry and Jevon was pleased he predicted that the hankie in the warm sun would dry fastest.