Which rocks are waterproof? Which rocks are hard or soft? How and when do we use rocks? What types of rocks are there? These were just some of the questions we tried to answer during our Rock Investigations in Year 3 this half term.
Read on to find out more about our investigations…
During our ‘waterproofing’ experiment we talked about which ‘variable’ to change and which ‘variable’ we needed to keep the same to assist in making our experiment fair. We decided to change the rocks we were testing, but to keep the amount of drops we used the same to help us keep the experiment ‘fair’. It was great fun trying to keep the drops of water the same and we were surprised by some of the results. We found out that sandstone, limestone, pumice and chalk all absorb water, while slate and granite were waterproof!
Further fun was had while discovering the 3 main rock types. We used jelly beans to represent the particles from a variety of rocks used to make sedimentary rocks. We squeezed them tightly together (pressure) and placed them in the midday sun (heat) to produce an imaginary metamorphic rock. Lastly we added extreme heat to our metamorphic rock to change it yet again, into an Igneous rock. Phew! What a lot of scientific words to learn – it was all worth it in the end though, as we got to eat some imaginary rock particles along the way…Yum!
