| All this talk about what's happening in our cups made us think about getting down to the particle level. We had a great conversation regarding the limitations to using our magnet boards, as we notice that water moves freely and our previous models were stagnant. So we figured that marbles could be a great substitution for water, and magnetic marbles could act as a great replacement for the particles in a solid, like the cup. |
Boy did we have fun, seeing how the glass marbles (water particles) were behaving when they tried to evaporate out of the cup and hit the lid. Check out the video (and turn it on slow-mo)! We saw lots of "wiggling and jiggling" as students put it! We summarized our thinking into the following representation below!
So if cups without lids lose water particles to evaporation, it's clear to us that this is why a cup loses mass. Duh, right? You lose a particle, you lose weight. However, what's odd to us is that cups that have lids on them don't really lose weight, but still lose/gain temperature (depending on whether it's hot or cold to start with).
Mrs. Brinza and Mr. Carmalt first heard students' interests a few weeks ago when we began running cup tests. So here's the data from behind-the-scenes "stuff." It seems like no matter what, when it's a closed system, we're not losing weight, but we're losing temperature. So what's really going on that gets this to happen?!?!?! Is it light? Heat? Both? What are those particles really doing?!?!
Mrs. Brinza and Mr. Carmalt first heard students' interests a few weeks ago when we began running cup tests. So here's the data from behind-the-scenes "stuff." It seems like no matter what, when it's a closed system, we're not losing weight, but we're losing temperature. So what's really going on that gets this to happen?!?!?! Is it light? Heat? Both? What are those particles really doing?!?!