🧊 Melting ice with salt, sugar and sand: the whole packet

🧊 Melting ice with salt, sugar and sand · 2nd–6th 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 what is sprinkled on the ice, then how long the ice cube takes to melt will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

4 levels × 3 tries at each = 12 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: 4 cubes for each try
• 🧂 Salt
• 🍬 Sugar
• 🏖️ Sand (from a sandbox, or play sand)
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 4
• 🥄 Measuring spoons
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers

Be safe: 💧 Water

1. Put four plates side by side and label them: nothing, salt, sugar, sand.
2. Put one ice cube from the same tray on each plate.
3. Sprinkle a teaspoon of salt, sugar or sand on the right cube.
4. Start the timer.
5. Check every 5 minutes and write down which ones are still ice.
6. Write down the time when each cube is all water.
7. Do the whole test two more times.
8. Draw a bar for each one. Which melted the ice fastest?

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

I changed: Sprinkled on   I measured: how long the ice cube takes to melt (minutes)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: sprinkled on 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: try 1, 2 and 3 teaspoons of salt, and graph how the melting time changes.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: what melts ice fastest: salt, sugar or sand?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing what is sprinkled on the ice would change how long the ice cube takes to melt, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed what is sprinkled on the ice (Nothing, Salt, Sugar, Sand) and measured how long the ice cube takes to melt in minutes.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept ice cubes from the same tray and the same teaspoonful sprinkled on the same, so only what is sprinkled on the ice was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 4 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: Nothing and Sand 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 1, 2 and 3 teaspoons of salt, and graph how the melting time changes.