🧊 Cups that keep ice: the whole packet

🧊 Cups that keep ice · 1st–7th grade · 1 day of testing · about $1 · 150 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 the cup is made of, then how long the ice cube takes to melt all the way 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

• 🧊 Ice cubes, all from the same tray: 12 cubes
• 🥤 Paper cups: 3 paper cups
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 3
• 🫙 A clear jar or tall glass: 3 small glass jars or glasses
• 🥤 Foam cups, the kind for hot drinks: 3
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer

Be safe: 💧 Water

1. Line up three paper, three plastic, three glass and three foam cups on a table, out of the sun.
2. Label each cup with a strip of masking tape.
3. Drop one ice cube from the same tray into each cup, as fast as you can.
4. Start the timer.
5. Every 10 minutes, look in each cup and write down which ones still have ice.
6. Write down the time when each cube is all water.
7. The three cups of each kind are your three trials.
8. Find the middle time for each kind of cup, and draw a bar graph.

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

I changed: Cup   I measured: how long the ice cube takes to melt all the way (minutes)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: cup along the bottom, minutes 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 a foil lid on half the cups of each kind, and graph lid and no lid side by side.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: which cup keeps an ice cube from melting longest?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing what the cup is made of would change how long the ice cube takes to melt all the way, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed what the cup is made of (Paper, Plastic, Glass, Foam) and measured how long the ice cube takes to melt all the way in minutes.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept ice cubes from the same tray, one in each cup and cups about the same size the same, so only what the cup is made of 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: Paper and Foam 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 a foil lid on half the cups of each kind, and graph lid and no lid side by side.