🎨 Coloured paper fading in the sun: the whole packet

🎨 Coloured paper fading in the sun · 2nd–6th grade · 14 days of testing · free · 30 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 18 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 the colour of the paper, then how faded the sunny half of the paper is after fourteen days 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

• 🟨 Construction paper: black, white, red, blue and yellow: 1 sheet each of red, yellow, blue and black
• 🥈 Foil
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• ✏️ A pencil
• ✂️ Kid scissors
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 😎 Never look at the sun

1. Cut three squares, about 8 cm wide, from each of four colours: red, yellow, blue and black.
2. Tape a strip of foil over half of each square, on one edge only, so you can lift it to peek.
3. Make a fade scale: 0 means both halves look the same, 4 means the sunny half is very pale.
4. Tape all twelve squares to the inside of a sunny window, mixing up the colours.
5. Never look at the sun: look at the paper.
6. Every day, lift the foil a little and give each square a fade score from 0 to 4.
7. Put the foil back each time and write the scores in your log.
8. On day fourteen, write each square's score in your results table.
9. Find the middle score for each colour and draw a bar graph.

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

I changed: Paper colour   I measured: how faded the sunny half of the paper is after fourteen days (fade score, 0 to 4)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: paper colour along the bottom, fade score, 0 to 4 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 one set of squares in a sunny window and one in a shady spot, and graph the fade score for each place.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which paper colour fades fastest in the sun?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing the colour of the paper would change how faded the sunny half of the paper is after fourteen days, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed the colour of the paper (Red, Yellow, Blue, Black) and measured how faded the sunny half of the paper is after fourteen days in fade score, 0 to 4.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same kind of paper, cut to the same size and foil covering exactly half of each square the same, so only the colour of the paper 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: Red and Black 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 one set of squares in a sunny window and one in a shady spot, and graph the fade score for each place.