Last week, the Year 1/2 class carried out an experiment which involved a big bucket of water, playdough boats and golden pebbles. The children were investigating how changing the shape of a material that sinks in water can help it to float.
The children were each given a ball of playdough, which when they first put in the water, sank straight to the bottom of the bucket. They came up with the idea of molding the playdough into a boat shape, which they discovered allowed the playdough to float. Once it was in the water, they tested to see how many golden pebbles it could hold before it sank.
Click below to see more photos of the children experimenting, to see what they learned and how many pebble weights their boats could carry.
The first few boats into the water sank immediately so the children learned pretty quickly to make sure their boat didn’t have any cracks in it and that the playdough wasn’t too thin. They also thought about the shape of boat they were making. The winning boat managed to hold 12 golden pebbles before it sank. The children them made one big boat with all of the playdough which managed to carry a whopping 30 pebbles!