☁️ Cloud in a jar: the whole packet

☁️ Cloud in a jar · 3rd–8th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 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 warm the water in the jar is, then how cloudy the jar gets in one minute 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 clear jar or tall glass: 1 big clear glass jar
• 🧊 Cold water from the fridge
• 🚰 Warm water
• ♨️ Hot water from the tap or kettle, for a grown-up to pour: hot from the tap, never boiling
• 🧊 Ice cubes, all from the same tray: a plateful for each try
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 1 that sits on the jar's mouth
• 📄 Paper: 1 dark sheet
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🌡️ A thermometer (digital, or the red-liquid kind)
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🩹 Tape

Be safe: 🔥 Hot · 💧 Water

1. Tape a sheet of dark paper on the wall behind where the jar will stand, so a cloud is easy to see.
2. Draw a cloud scale: 0 is clear, 5 is so thick you can't see through it.
3. Pour a cup of fridge-cold water into the jar and measure its temperature.
4. Set a plate of fresh ice cubes on top of the jar, start the timer and watch.
5. After one minute, give the jar a cloud score and write it down.
6. Empty and dry the jar, then do it two more times.
7. Do three tries with warm tap water the same way.
8. Grown-up: A grown-up pours a cup of hot water into the jar and measures its temperature.
9. Grown-up: A grown-up sets the plate of ice on top, and you time one minute and score the cloud.
10. Grown-up: A grown-up empties the jar, and you do two more hot tries the same way.
11. Draw a line graph: water temperature along the bottom, cloud score up the side.

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

I changed: Water   I measured: how cloudy the jar gets in one minute (cloud score, 0 to 5)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: water along the bottom, cloud score, 0 to 5 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 hot water with no ice, a few cubes and a full plate of ice, and draw a line for each.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does hotter water make a bigger cloud in a jar?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how warm the water in the jar is would change how cloudy the jar gets in one minute, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how warm the water in the jar is (Cold from the fridge, Warm from the tap, Hot, poured by a grown-up) and measured how cloudy the jar gets in one minute in cloud score, 0 to 5.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same jar with the same amount of water and the same plate of ice cubes on top the same, so only how warm the water in the jar is 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: Cold from the fridge and Hot, poured by a grown-up 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 hot water with no ice, a few cubes and a full plate of ice, and draw a line for each.