We turned to using some snow to help us with some figuring out in our class this week! it's winter here in Chicago, and we just got a bunch of snow...
And watched and felt what happened as it sat in our learning spaces at home/learning centers. Here's what students said:
1. It's cold...but not at cold as when I first got it.
2. The outside is wet.
3. It's melting.
4. The bottom is really wet.
5. The fog on the outside isn't everywhere like it used to be...
So we started to think about this:
-If we said water got into the air in our hot liquids tests (the temperature went down in the cup as did the mass), we're wondering this:
*Can the water on the outside of these cups be from the air? Or from the inside, since the snow is melting?
We ran two investigations to help us with this: a weight test and a red-liquids test. Check out what we saw happen:
1. It's cold...but not at cold as when I first got it.
2. The outside is wet.
3. It's melting.
4. The bottom is really wet.
5. The fog on the outside isn't everywhere like it used to be...
So we started to think about this:
-If we said water got into the air in our hot liquids tests (the temperature went down in the cup as did the mass), we're wondering this:
*Can the water on the outside of these cups be from the air? Or from the inside, since the snow is melting?
We ran two investigations to help us with this: a weight test and a red-liquids test. Check out what we saw happen:
And here's what some students are thinking about what these two investigations are telling us about somethings we all have seen on a hot summer day (what we are dreaming of this time of the year, huh?):
So wait...if water can enter the air and it can somehow get onto the outside of the cup, how does this actually happen? We're noticing that the only time the droplets appear are when it's cold, but we also physically see water evaporate when the liquid is hot. And there's more of a temperature change along with a change in mass when the lid isn't present. Man, so much figuring out to do!