☀️ Soil, sand and water in the sun: the whole packet

☀️ Soil, sand and water in the sun · 1st–4th 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 in the cup, then how many degrees the top warms in 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

• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 9, the same size
• 🪴 Potting soil: enough for 3 cups
• 🏖️ Sand (from a sandbox, or play sand): enough for 3 cups
• 🚰 Water from the tap: enough for 3 cups
• 🌡️ A thermometer (digital, or the red-liquid kind)
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🍽️ A baking tray or big plate
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer

Be safe: 🌳 Outside · 😎 Never look at the sun

1. Put a strip of tape around nine cups at the same height, near the top.
2. Fill three cups with soil, three with sand and three with water, up to the tape.
3. Leave them inside for an hour so they all start at room temperature.
4. Read the thermometer just under the top of each cup, and write it down.
5. Set the cups side by side on a tray in a sunny spot, and start the timer.
6. After one hour, read each cup again the same way.
7. Take the first number away from the second: that is how many degrees it warmed.
8. Draw a bar graph with one bar for soil, one for sand and one for water.

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

I changed: What is in the cup   I measured: how many degrees the top warms in one hour (degrees)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: what is in the cup along the bottom, degrees 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: read each cup at the top and at the bottom, and graph both depths side by side.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which warms up most in the sun: soil, sand or water?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing what is in the cup would change how many degrees the top warms in one hour, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed what is in the cup (Soil, Sand, Water) and measured how many degrees the top warms in one hour in degrees.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept cups filled to the same line and all the cups side by side in the same sunny spot the same, so only what is in the cup 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: Soil and 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: read each cup at the top and at the bottom, and graph both depths side by side.