We discovered some really interesting things about air today. Of course we tried to find all the answers by ourselves by experimenting.
Here are some of the questions we asked ourselves...
- Is an empty bottle really empty? We discovered that empty bottles are actually full (of air!), and had a laugh at the irish words lán which means full and folamh (pronounced full of) which means empty! We know that there is air in the bottles because when we submerged a bottle that looks empty into a basin of water we found bubbles popping out of the bottle.
- Can you fill a bottle with water by submerging it in the water? No, we couldn't. There were always little bubbles of air left in the bottle (unless we added some extra water in to the bottle afterwards).
- Can you take the air out of the bottle? Yes and no. By squeezing the bottle, we got some of the air out, but not all of it. By sucking the air out of the bottle we got some of the air out, but not all of it. By replacing the air with water we got some of the air out. We can get all of the air out in this way if we top up the water in the bottle so the bottle is full to the brim of water.
- What happens to tissue in a glass when we submerge the glass upside down in a basin of water? We enjoyed predicting the answer to this. We reckoned that with the glass submerged in water, the tissue SHOULD get wet. However, now we know that there is air in the glass, as well as the tissue and many of us predicted that this air might protect the tissue from getting wet. We were right! The glass was submerged but the tissue stayed dry (although the inside of the rim of the glass did get wet). From trying this out we think that maybe air can be squashed (comressed) a bit, but air does really take up space inside a container.
We are going to try these again at home and see can our parents and siblings correctly predict the answers to the questions we asked ourselves.