🎈 Vinegar amount and balloon size: the whole packet

🎈 Vinegar amount and balloon size · 3rd–7th grade · 1 day of testing · about $2 · 45 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change how much vinegar goes in the bottle, then how far around the balloon is will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🎈 A balloon: 9, the same kind
• 🧂 Baking soda
• 🍶 White vinegar: about 2 cups
• 🧴 An empty plastic bottle: 1, the same one each time
• 🔻 A kitchen funnel
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🥄 Measuring spoons
• 🧵 String or yarn
• 📏 A tape measure, or a long ruler
• ✂️ Kid scissors

Be safe: 🎈 Balloons · 🥽 Goggles on · 🧽 A bit messy

1. Put your goggles on.
2. Grown-up: A grown-up stretches nine balloons by blowing each one up once and letting the air out.
3. Use the funnel to put 2 teaspoons of baking soda into a balloon.
4. Pour a quarter cup of vinegar into the bottle.
5. Stretch the neck of the balloon over the bottle's mouth, keeping the baking soda in the balloon.
6. Lift the balloon up so the baking soda falls into the vinegar, and wait for the fizzing to stop.
7. Cut a piece of string and wrap it around the widest part of the balloon.
8. Lay the string along the tape measure, and write the length in your table.
9. Rinse the bottle and repeat with new balloons: three tries each for a quarter cup, half a cup and 1 cup.
10. Find the mean for each amount, and draw a line graph with vinegar along the bottom.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Vinegar   I measured: how far around the balloon is (cm)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: vinegar along the bottom, cm up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: keep half a cup of vinegar and try 1, 2 and 3 teaspoons of baking soda, and graph both lines together.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does more vinegar blow a balloon up bigger?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how much vinegar goes in the bottle would change how far around the balloon is, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how much vinegar goes in the bottle (A quarter cup, Half a cup, 1 cup) and measured how far around the balloon is in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept 2 teaspoons of baking soda every time and balloons of the same kind, stretched the same way the same, so only how much vinegar goes in the bottle was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: A quarter cup and 1 cup gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: keep half a cup of vinegar and try 1, 2 and 3 teaspoons of baking soda, and graph both lines together.