Today we talked about what makes objects float or sink.
Teacher had some fruit for lunch.
We guessed which pieces of fruit would float and which would sink.
Here are our guesses:
We were right only some of the time.
Here are the correct answers:
Next we had to come up with a suggestion as to why certain fruit float or sink.
Is it because of weight? shape? ability to hold air? size?
We noticed that an orange with skin on always floats. We tried to think of ways to have this orange sink. Some of our suggestions were:
cover the orange with a towel or cloth, prick the orange skin with a pin, drop the orange from a height, push the orange to the bottom of the water container.
In fact, the best way to get the orange to sink is to peel it!
Funnily enough though, our banana floated whether it was peeled or not! Strange!
We discovered that a while an orange floats, a peeled orange sinks, orange peel floats, a segment of orange sinks, even if it is put floating on peel.
We were able to make play dough float by changing its shape from a sphere to a boat shape (but not a banana shape). We could even add passengers.
Lots for us to think about today!
