4F is at it again! As we continue our quest to learn everything we can about the different states of matter, we noticed that water is wonderful because it very clearly has all three states. This led us to this weeks big question, How does water change it's state? We carried out 3 mini experiments to help answer this question.

First we boiled some water in the kettle and poured it into a clear bowl. We wrapped that bowl in cling film and saw it begin to expand with the pressure of the water vapor, then we added ice to the top. We instantly saw results! first the heat from inside the bowl started to melt the ice on top, then the water vapor inside began to condense on the cling film turning back into water.

Our next mini experiment looked at cold. Most of us knew to make water into a solid we could freeze it into ice but for this experiment we had to predict if adding salt would make the ice melt faster or if it would make it colder. Using what we know about winter weather most children predicted that the salted ice would melt faster and were shocked when it was revealed that the salted ice was actually much colder than the ice without salt!

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Our final mini experiment was to boil a kettle and put a cookie sheet over the top. As we saw the steam rising from the kettle, we knew that the water was evaporating. when we put the baking tray over the top, it at first didn't seem to do anything but move the air. However, when we felt the tray we were able to confirm that it was wet.

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All together these experiments helped us to see that states of matter change based on temperature. Making the water very cold made it solid, heating the ice melted it to water, heating the water turned it to gas and rapidly cooling that gas turned it back to it's liquid state of water.

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Stay tuned for more exciting updates from 4F as our young scientists ask questions, experiment and find answers!