🥛 Milk fat and magic milk: the whole packet

🥛 Milk fat and magic milk · 2nd–6th grade · 1 day of testing · about $2 · 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 much fat is in the milk, then how far the colour spreads across the milk in one minute 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

• 🥛 A little skim, 2% and whole milk
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 3, white if you can
• 🌈 Food colouring: one dark colour
• 🫧 Dish soap
• ✏️ A new pencil with an eraser on the end
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🧽 A sponge or cloth, for wiping up
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 🚫 Not food · 🚫 Test food is not for eating · 🧼 Wash your hands after

1. Label three plates skim, 2% and whole with masking tape.
2. Pour enough of the right milk to cover the bottom of each plate, the same amount on every plate.
3. Wait a moment for the milk to stop moving.
4. Put one drop of food colouring in the middle of the first plate.
5. Dip the eraser end of a pencil 1 cm deep in dish soap, then touch it to the middle of the colour.
6. Watch for one minute, then measure how far the colour has spread, from edge to edge.
7. Do the same on the other two plates, one at a time.
8. Tip out the milk, wash the plates and the pencil, and do it two more times.
9. Fill in your table and draw a bar graph, with one bar for each milk.

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

I changed: Milk   I measured: how far the colour spreads across the milk in one minute (cm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: milk along the bottom, cm 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: use whole milk at fridge-cold, room and warm temperature, and graph the spread against the temperature.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does whole milk swirl farther than skim milk?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how much fat is in the milk would change how far the colour spreads across the milk in one minute, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how much fat is in the milk (Skim milk, 2% milk, Whole milk) and measured how far the colour spreads across the milk in one minute in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same amount of milk on each plate and one drop of the same food colouring each time the same, so only how much fat is in the milk 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: Skim milk and Whole milk 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: use whole milk at fridge-cold, room and warm temperature, and graph the spread against the temperature.