🧊 Ice shape and melting: the whole packet

🧊 Ice shape and melting · 1st–4th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 90 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 broken up the ice is, then how long the ice takes to melt 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

• 🧊 Ice cubes, all from the same tray: 9 cubes
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 9
• 🛍️ Plastic bags: 1, for crushing
• 🥄 A spoon
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🧽 A sponge or cloth, for wiping up

Be safe: 💧 Water

1. Grown-up: A grown-up breaks three ice cubes, each into four pieces.
2. Grown-up: A grown-up taps three more cubes into tiny bits in a plastic bag, with the back of a spoon.
3. Set out nine plates in three rows of three, in a room with no sun on the table.
4. Put a whole cube on each plate in row one, and four pieces on each plate in row two.
5. Share the crushed ice between the three plates in row three.
6. Start the timer when the last plate is ready.
7. Look at the plates every five minutes, and read the timer when a plate has no ice left.
8. Write the minutes for each plate in your table. If ice is left at 90 minutes, write 90.
9. Wipe up the water with a sponge, then draw a bar graph with one bar for each shape of ice.

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

I changed: Ice shape   I measured: how long the ice takes to melt (minutes)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: ice shape along the bottom, minutes 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: put each shape on a plate and in a foam cup, and graph the melting times side by side.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does crushed ice melt faster than a whole cube?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how broken up the ice is would change how long the ice takes to melt, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how broken up the ice is (One whole cube, A cube in four pieces, A cube crushed to bits) and measured how long the ice takes to melt in minutes.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same amount of ice on every plate, one cube's worth and the same kind of plate the same, so only how broken up the ice 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: One whole cube and A cube crushed to bits 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: put each shape on a plate and in a foam cup, and graph the melting times side by side.