☀️ Sun, shade, wind and drying water: the whole packet

☀️ Sun, shade, wind and drying water · 2nd–6th grade · 2 days of testing · free · 20 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 where the water is left, then how far the water level drops in two days 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, the same size
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• ✏️ A pencil
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 🌳 Outside

1. Stick a strip of masking tape down the side of each of nine clear cups.
2. Pour half a cup of water into each and mark the water line on the tape.
3. Put three cups in the sun, three in the shade and three in a breezy spot.
4. After one day, mark the new water line on every cup.
5. Measure from the first line to the new one in millimetres.
6. Do the same again at the end of day two.
7. If it rains, bring the cups in and start again on a dry day.
8. Find the mean drop for each spot and draw a bar graph.

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

I changed: Where the cup sits   I measured: how far the water level drops in two days (mm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: where the cup sits along the bottom, mm 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: in each spot, set a wide bowl beside a narrow cup with the same water, and work out how the opening's size matters.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: where does a puddle dry fastest: sun, shade or wind?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing where the water is left would change how far the water level drops in two days, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed where the water is left (In the sun, In the shade, In a breezy spot) and measured how far the water level drops in two days in mm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same amount of water in each cup and the same kind of cup the same, so only where the water is left 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: In the sun and In a breezy spot 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: in each spot, set a wide bowl beside a narrow cup with the same water, and work out how the opening's size matters.