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Sink or Swim? - Ice Cube Science Experiment for Kids |
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Experiments! |
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Materials |
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Tall
glass or jar
Vegetable oil (other cooking oils will do)
Ice Cube |
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Directions |
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Before beginning the experiment, ask each other if they
think water is heavier or lighter than oil and then test to
see!
Fill glass 3/4 full with vegetable oil
Place an ice cube in glass and watch what it does -
Does it sink or swim?
As the water melts, watch what happens - Does is sink
or swim? |
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What's Going On? |
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When water is
frozen, molecules expand and take up
more room than when they were liquid. Because both the
ice cube and water weigh the same, but the ice cube is
less dense it floats in oil. |
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Also Try..... |
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See if you can make ice
cubes sink by filling a metal ice
cube tray with water and then starting with the first cube
add 1 drop of food coloring, 2 drops to the second cube,
3 drops to the third and so on until you have added 12
drops to the twelfth cube. Freeze ice cubes and repeat
the experiment above, but see how many drops of food
coloring it took to actually make the ice cube sink rather
than float. |
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