Thursday, January 5, 2012

Messy Matter

We are finishing up learning about Matter and all its properties this week.  We had fun with experiments and learning about solids, liquids and gases.  Yesterday, we played with a type of matter that was both a solid and a liquid.  We started with water and then passed around some corn starch.  We felt the corn starch and saw that it was very smooth, but still a solid.  The particles were very small, so when we poured it in the cup, it took the shape of the container.  But when we mixed both water and the corn starch together a funny thing happened.  We predicted it would be like a cake mix batter, which is what it looked like... until we felt it!

What a surprise we had when we went to touch it!  When we pressed on the matter, it became hard, but when we let it go, it ran through our fingers... just like water.  Was it a liquid or a solid???

Look... it is hard...



No.. it is wet!!!








What a great way to learn about a matter that doesn't really fall into a solid or liquid category. 



It is called "OOBLECK."
Oobleck is a non-newtonian fluid. That is, it acts like a liquid when being poured, but like a solid when a force is acting on it. You can grab it and then it will ooze out of your hands. If you make enough Oobleck, you can even walk on it!
To make it was very easy!  We had one and a half cups of corn starch and one cup of water and mixed them together to experiment the fun!


No comments:

Post a Comment