Liquids, Solids and Gases

When we decided to home educate, I asked Elsa what she’d like to learn about and one thing she mentioned was liquids, solids and gases.

We did some worksheets from a book bought from The Works.  These books are good, but we don’t use them that often really.

She asked to do some experiments (eek)… so I hoped these would do.

Firstly, she’d seen a glass/arrow trick online and wanted to try that.  She kept on about it, so we discussed ‘how can we fit this into our liquids, solids and gases topic”?

So, how did we? I hear you ask.

We used a variety of different glasses/bottles (solid) and part filled them with water (liquid) and the rest of the bottle was still filled with air (gas) 🙂 don’t you just love an 8 year olds logic. 🙂

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We did this experiment to prove refraction.  We tried 4 different types of vessels to see if they were all the same or whether the size made any difference.  As it happens it does, the bigger the glass the further away it needs to be from the arrows for one of them to change. 🙂

The second experiment we did was ‘Can we change a solid into a liquid?’

This involved hot water and cold water and different solids. We tested each solid in both the hot and cold water to see if they would dissolve, whether they dissolved quicker or slower in hot or cold water and whether it turned back into a solid once we were done.

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Elsa enjoyed doing these experiments, although I’m not sure how suitable they are for the subject of liquids, solids and gases. 🙂