🥤 Cold cups and drops outside: the whole packet

🥤 Cold cups and drops outside · 3rd–7th 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 cold the water in the cup is, then how many drops are on the cup's outside, inside a small square, after ten minutes 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

• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 9, all the same size
• 🧊 Cold water from the fridge
• 🚰 Water from the tap: left in the room for an hour
• 🧊 Ice cubes, all from the same tray: 9 cubes
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🧻 Paper towels
• 🍽️ A baking tray or big plate
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 💧 Water

1. Dry the outside of nine clear cups with a paper towel.
2. Frame a 3 cm square on the side of each cup with four short strips of masking tape.
3. Write ice, fridge or room on a bit of tape near each cup's rim, three of each.
4. Pour half a cup of room-temperature tap water into each of the three room cups.
5. Pour half a cup of fridge-cold water into each of the three fridge cups.
6. Pour half a cup of fridge-cold water into each of the three ice cups, and add three ice cubes to each.
7. Set all nine cups on a tray, away from the sun, and start the timer.
8. Wait ten minutes and don't touch the outsides of the cups.
9. Count the drops inside each tape square and write the numbers in your results table.
10. Find the mean drops for each kind of water and draw a bar graph.

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

I changed: Water in the cup   I measured: how many drops are on the cup's outside, inside a small square, after ten minutes (drops)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: water in the cup along the bottom, drops 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: test the three kinds of water in a steamy bathroom after a shower and in a dry bedroom, and graph the drops for each room.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a colder cup get more drops on its outside?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how cold the water in the cup is would change how many drops are on the cup's outside, inside a small square, after ten minutes, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how cold the water in the cup is (Ice water, Fridge-cold water, Room-temperature water) and measured how many drops are on the cup's outside, inside a small square, after ten minutes in drops.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same kind of cup and the same amount of water in every cup the same, so only how cold the water in the cup 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: Ice water and Room-temperature water 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: test the three kinds of water in a steamy bathroom after a shower and in a dry bedroom, and graph the drops for each room.