🌡️ Coloured paper in the sun: the whole packet

🌡️ Coloured paper in the sun · 3rd–8th grade · 1 day of testing · about $3 · 100 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 the colour of the paper, then how many degrees the thermometer under the paper warms in 20 minutes 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

• 🌡️ A thermometer (digital, or the red-liquid kind): 4, all the same kind
• 📄 Paper: 1 sheet each of white, yellow, blue and black
• 📦 Flat cardboard: a flat piece to lay them on
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🩹 Tape

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

1. Fold each sheet of paper in half to make a pocket.
2. Slide a thermometer into each pocket so its tip sits in the middle, and tape the sides shut.
3. Lay all four side by side on the cardboard in the shade, and write down each starting temperature.
4. Carry the cardboard into full sun, all at once, and start the timer.
5. After 20 minutes, read each thermometer and write it down.
6. Take away the starting number to find how much each one warmed.
7. Move them back into the shade for 15 minutes to cool, then do it two more times.
8. Never look at the sun: look down at your thermometers.
9. Find the mean warming 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 many degrees the thermometer under the paper warms in 20 minutes (degrees)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: paper colour 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: test every colour in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon, and draw a line for each colour.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which colour of paper warms up most 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 many degrees the thermometer under the paper warms in 20 minutes, 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 (White, Yellow, Blue, Black) and measured how many degrees the thermometer under the paper warms in 20 minutes in degrees.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same kind of thermometer in each pocket and the same size of paper, folded the same way 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: White 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: test every colour in the morning, at noon and in the afternoon, and draw a line for each colour.