🌲 Pinecones wet and dry: the whole packet

🌲 Pinecones wet and dry · 1st–5th grade · 2 days of testing · free · 75 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 wet the pinecone gets, then how wide the pinecone is across after one hour 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

• 🌲 Pinecones picked up outside, all from one tree: 9 open ones, about the same size
• 🍽️ A baking tray or big plate: to dry them on
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 2
• 🥣 A big bowl
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 🌳 Outside · 🧼 Wash your hands after

1. With a grown-up, pick up nine open pinecones from under one tree, all about the same size.
2. Let them dry on a tray indoors overnight, until their scales are wide open.
3. Next day, measure across the widest part of each pinecone and write it down as its starting width.
4. Write dry on a bit of tape on a plate, and put three pinecones on it.
5. Write damp on a plate, dip three pinecones in a bowl of water, shake them off, and put them on it.
6. Put the last three pinecones in the bowl of water and roll them so every scale gets wet.
7. Start the timer for one hour, and turn the soaked pinecones over after half an hour.
8. After one hour, measure across the widest part of every pinecone again.
9. Write each width in your results table.
10. Find the middle number for each group and draw a bar graph.
11. Wash your hands after touching the pinecones.

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

I changed: How wet   I measured: how wide the pinecone is across after one hour (cm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: how wet 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: soak the pinecones for 15, 30 and 60 minutes, and graph how wide they are after each time.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a pinecone close when it gets wet?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how wet the pinecone gets would change how wide the pinecone is across after one hour, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how wet the pinecone gets (Left dry, Damp: dipped and shaken off, Soaked in water) and measured how wide the pinecone is across after one hour in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept pinecones from the same tree, about the same size and every pinecone wide open at the start the same, so only how wet the pinecone gets 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: Left dry and Soaked in 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: soak the pinecones for 15, 30 and 60 minutes, and graph how wide they are after each time.