💧 Bottle flips and water: the whole packet

💧 Bottle flips and water · 3rd–8th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 40 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 water is in the bottle, then how many of 10 flips land upright 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

• 🧴 An empty plastic bottle: 1, with its cap
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🧽 A sponge or cloth, for wiping up
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 💧 Water · 🧽 A bit messy

1. Measure the bottle's height, and tape marks a quarter, half and three-quarters of the way up.
2. Fill the bottle with tap water to the quarter mark and screw the cap on tight.
3. Clear a table of anything breakable, and wipe it dry.
4. Hold the bottle by its neck, flip it so it turns over once, and try to land it upright on the table.
5. It only counts if the bottle stands on its bottom and stays up.
6. Flip it ten times, and write the number of landings in your table under Try 1.
7. Do ten more flips for Try 2 and ten more for Try 3.
8. Add water to the half mark, cap it tight, and do three tries of ten flips.
9. Add water to the three-quarter mark, cap it tight, and do three more tries of ten flips.
10. Find the mean landings for each amount and draw a line graph.
11. Wipe up every spill when you are done.

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

I changed: Water in the bottle   I measured: how many of 10 flips land upright (landings, of 10)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: water in the bottle along the bottom, landings, of 10 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: try the same three amounts in a tall thin bottle and a short wide bottle, and graph the landings for both.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: how much water makes a bottle flip land best?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how much water is in the bottle would change how many of 10 flips land upright, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how much water is in the bottle (A quarter full, Half full, Three-quarters full) and measured how many of 10 flips land upright in landings, of 10.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same bottle with its cap on tight and flipping it so it turns over once the same, so only how much water is 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 full and Three-quarters full 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: try the same three amounts in a tall thin bottle and a short wide bottle, and graph the landings for both.