Saturday, October 15, 2011

Spooky Science: A Matter Experiment

I know many of my VA friends are teaching a science unit on Matter now so I want to pass this one along before October is over. In this experiment, students are using the Scientific Method of Question, Hypothesis, Procedure, Observation and Conclusion to investigate changes in matter.

Students worked with a lab partner. Students are given a package of Halloween Gummies and told to pick one out to use in this experiment. Students are then to observe the gummy and record all its physical properties on the lab report below . (We had spent a couple of days prior to this working on what physical properties were).

Here is a student using a magnifying glass to get a closer look. She records in pictures and words what she notices about the size, shape, color, texture, luster of the gummy. We had a class poster we made earlier that week that included words that described texture and appearance. This helped them greatly! Lab groups placed their gummies in a small cup overnight.

The next day, the students got their gummy back and observe changes. This group noticed that even the water changed in color and smell.

They were VERY surprised to see the changes. The gummies grew by one centimeter and many changed in shape, texture and color.


Students recorded all their observations on the lab report below. They compared their result with their original hypothesis and wrote their conclusions.






Here are the experiment sheets if interested. I copied them back to back on one sheet. Students folded them in half to make a lab booklet.


Gummy Experiment 10001






Matter Changes 2 PDF




























0 comments:

Post a Comment