💧 Ice in water or in air: the whole packet

💧 Ice in water or in air · 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 where the ice cube sits, then how long the ice cube 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
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 9, the same size
• 🧊 Cold water from the fridge: 3 cups
• 🚰 Warm water: 3 cups, warm from the tap and never hot
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines

Be safe: 💧 Water

1. Label nine clear cups with tape: three air, three cold water and three warm water.
2. Pour a cup of fridge-cold water into the cold cups, and a cup of warm tap water into the warm cups.
3. Leave the three air cups empty, and stand all nine cups out of the sun.
4. Slide one ice cube into each cup, and start the timer when the last cube is in.
5. Look at the cups often, and read the timer when a cube has turned all the way into water.
6. Write the minutes for each cup in your table. If a cube lasts to 90 minutes, write 90.
7. Find the mean time for each place, and draw a bar graph.

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

I changed: Where the ice sits   I measured: how long the ice cube takes to melt (minutes)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: where the ice sits 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: add a cup of water at room temperature, and graph the melting time against the water's temperature.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does ice melt faster in water or in air?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing where the ice cube sits 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 where the ice cube sits (In the air, In cold water, In warm water) 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 one cup of water in each cup that has water the same, so only where the ice cube sits 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 air and In warm 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: add a cup of water at room temperature, and graph the melting time against the water's temperature.