🌈 Paper strip width and walking water: the whole packet

🌈 Paper strip width and walking water · 2nd–6th grade · 1 day of testing · free · 60 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 wide the paper towel strip is, then how high the colour climbs up the strip in five minutes 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

• 🧻 Paper towels: 2 sheets
• 🌈 Food colouring: one dark colour
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🫙 A clear jar or tall glass: a tall glass
• ✏️ A pencil
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers
• ✂️ Kid scissors
• 📏 A ruler
• 🩹 Tape

Be safe: 💧 Water · 🧽 A bit messy

1. Pour water into a tall glass and stir in lots of food colouring.
2. Cut nine strips 12 cm long: three 1 cm wide, three 3 cm wide and three 6 cm wide.
3. Write each strip's width at its top with a crayon.
4. Tape the top of a 1 cm strip to a pencil laid across the glass.
5. Add or pour out water until the bottom 1 cm of the strip dips in, then start the timer.
6. After five minutes, lift the strip out and lay it flat.
7. Measure from the bottom of the strip up to where the colour stops, and write it in your table.
8. Test the other widths the same way, with a new strip every time.
9. Do all three widths two more times, then draw a line graph with width along the bottom.

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

I changed: Strip width   I measured: how high the colour climbs up the strip in five minutes (cm)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: strip width 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: cut the strips from a coffee filter as well, and graph the climb for each kind of paper at each width.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a wider paper strip walk water faster?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how wide the paper towel strip is would change how high the colour climbs up the strip in five minutes, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how wide the paper towel strip is (1 cm wide, 3 cm wide, 6 cm wide) and measured how high the colour climbs up the strip in five minutes in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept strips cut from the same paper towel and the same strip length the same, so only how wide the paper towel strip is 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: 1 cm wide and 6 cm wide 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: cut the strips from a coffee filter as well, and graph the climb for each kind of paper at each width.