Science

This is the Science Log we submitted to receive the Award of Science and Maths

Excellence 2010-2011

Step 1
How much air can my lungs hold?

We marked a 5 litre plastic in half litres.
We filled it with water, put a lid on it and turned it upside down in a basin of water.
We removed the lid and put one end of a tube into the bottle.
We put a straw reed into the other end of the tube, took a deep breath and blew
through the tube until we emptied our lungs.
The amount of empty space at the top of the bottle shows the amount of air that
was in our lungs and which pushed the water out.

Greenwave Project
We are taking part in the Greenwave Project. We are recording rainfall, wind speed and temperature since the 7th February.
The Horse chestnut tree’s buds burst on 22nd March we spotted primroses on 2nd April.
We are waiting for the ash tree’s buds to burst and to spot the first swallows.

K’nex Experience
The theme of Xperience Engineering Project 2011 was ‘Engineering a cleaner world’. We decided to do a project on Carnsore Point Wind Farm. It was the first wind farm built on the east coast of Ireland. It consists of 14 wind turbines and supplies electricity to 10,000 – 12,000 houses each year. We built a model of the wind farm.

Creeping Colours

We used markers to place some colours on a piece of blotting paper about 1cm from the end.
We placed the end of the paper in water.
As the water travelled up the paper it separated the colours in the markers into their component colours

Friction – slip or stick
• When you rub your hands together they get hot due to friction. If you rub soap onto them they don’t get hot because the soap makes your hands more slippery and reduces friction.
• We slide coins and rubbers down a wooden plank. The smoother the surface the easier it slid.
• We tried to swivel a book on top of a tin. It fell off.
• We put some marbles on the rim of the tin and the book swivelled easily. The marbles reduce friction and enable the book to move more easily. This is the principle on which ball bearings are based.

Make a Light house

We attached wires to both sides of a bulb holder.
We stuck the bulb holder onto a cardboard circle.
We put the wires down through a paper towel holder
and let the circle sit on top of the paper towel holder.
We got a base with a switch made from 2 thumbtacks and a paper clip.
We attached the end of one of the wires from the bulb holder
to one thumbtack.
We attached the end of the other wire from the bulb holder
to a battery holder.
We attached one end of a wire to the battery holder and the other end
to the second thumbtack.
We put in the batteries and the bulb and checked that the circuit
was working.
We paper- mached and painted the lighthouses.

Surface tension & bubbles
o We filled a butter carton with water.
o We put a needle on a little piece of tissue paper and lay it carefully on the surface of the water.
o Eventually the tissue absorbed water and sank but the needle remained floating on the water due to surface tension.
o We put some water in a butter carton and blew bubbles in the water.
o We then added some wash-up liquid to the water and created bigger bubbles.
o When we pushed a dry finger into the bubbles they burst but we were able to put a wet finger into the bubbles without bursting it!

An onion cell slide
• Teacher took a small piece of an onion and peeled off the membrane from the underside.
• We put the membrane on a clean glass slide and added a drop of iodine.
• We placed the slide on the stage of the microscope.
• We were able to see the cell wall.

How Plants Take Up Water

We got four containers and placed several drops of different food colourings with some water into each container.
We placed a white carnation in each container.
The carnations changed colour showing that it takes up water by a process called capillary action.

Woodland Habitat

We went out to the woods and we saw a common pygmy woodlouse, a common shiny woodlouse and a striped pill woodlouse.
The trees we found were western red cedar a noble fir a Sitka spruce larch and a Douglas fir.
The plants we found were ivy, holly, nettles and herb-robert.

Snake Spiral

We photocopied, coloured in and cut out the snake
We attached a piece of string to the snake’s head.We hung the snake over a hot radiator
The snake twisted and spun in the hot air.

Floating Egg Trick

We got three plastic containers and half filled them with water.
We did not put any salt in the first container, put some salt in the second container and put a lot of salt in the third container.
We put an egg into the first container and it sank to the bottom.
We put and egg in the second container and it only sank half-way down the container.
We put an egg in the third container and the egg floated near the top of the container.

Wag the Dog

We coloured the dog and cut out the rectangle
We got the tongue and tail and coloured it and cut it out.
We folder the rectangle on the dotted line.
We cut out a v-shape at the dog’s mouth and placed the tail/tongue inside with the tongue coming out through the mouth and held it in place with a split pin.
When we moved the tail backwards the tongue moved forward. When we moved the tail forwards the tongue moved backwards.

Paper Helicopters

We cut out a small and large helicopter in paper then in card.
When we let the helicopter fall from a height they spun. The smaller helicopter reached the ground first because it was smaller and less surface area to experience air resistance.
When we added paper clips the helicopter spun faster and they reached the ground quicker.
The helicopter spun in a clockwise direction.

Mirror Writing
We drew a shape on a piece of paper.

We looked in the mirror and tried to trace over the shape. It was hard at first.
We got a maze and tried it.
We wrote our name on a piece of paper while looking in a mirror. It was hard at first .
Symmetrical letters appeared the right way in the mirror

Step 2
Visit by Garda G Comerford

Garda G Comerford visited our school on Wednesday 4th May and created a crime scene – someone had broken into the computer room. He then showed us how the gardai would use science to gather information about the crime. He lifted an ear print from the window, a footprint from the display board, a fingerprint from a picture and some dried blood from a computer.

Step 3
Science Evening
We held our Science Evening on Wednesday 13th April. All the pupils from the other classes came to see it in the afternoon and our parents came that evening.
Our parents really liked the mirror writing, how plants take up water, our lighthouses, how much air my lungs can hold, looking at the onion cell slide, the rocket launch , bubbles and our project on Carnsore Point Windfarm

Step 4
Maths
Paper Helicopters

We found rectangular and square shapes in the helicopter template
There were 7 vertical lines, 6 horizontal lines, 5 pairs of parallel lines and it had 1 vertical line of symmetry.
It had square angles, 20 of them and they are called right angles.
The area of the helicopter blades was 35cm2. For 36cm2 the blades could be 6cmX6cm, 4cmX9cm, 3cmX12cm, 9cmX4cm, 2cmX18cm,
The perimeter of our helicopter was 65cm
The pupils had difficulty counting the spins but this is what they found that the helicopters with the blades 9cm & 12cm long spun more and took longer to reach the ground.
Travelling at 140kms per hour (60 mins) the helicopter will travel 14kms in 6 mins

Which paper absorbs the best?
• The pupils predicted that the kitchen towel would absorb the best. They were right
Type of Paper Distance travelled Ranking
Kitchen towel 9cm 1st
Newspaper 4cm 2nd
A4 paper 2cm 3rd

• The dry sponge weighed 22g. We put it into 100ml of water and then it weighed 158g. It absorbed 136g of water which was a 618% increase in its weight! The wood weighed 45g when dry and 47g after being put into 100ml of water. It only absorbed 2g of water which was a 4.4% increase in its weight.

• The pupils were divided when it came to predicting the best absorber for the second
test. There were three sets of predictions
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
Towel Kitchen paper Cotton rag
Kitchen paper Cotton rag Towel
Cotton rag Towel Kitchen paper
Newspaper Newspaper Newspaper
Plastic Plastic Plastic

We put each material into a basin containing 100ml of water. These are the results of our exercise:
Material Dry weight Wet weight Weight of Water
Towel 36g 156g 120g
Kitchen paper 3g 32g 29g
Cotton rag 12g 39g 27g
Newspaper 3g 10g 7g
plastic 0g 2g 2g

• Group 1 were right in their predictions.
• The clothes absorbed 2kg of water in the wash. This was a 66.6% increase in their weight.
Paper Strength Activity

We cut the paper into strips 20cm by 5cm. We punched a hole in the middle of the strip the same distance from each end.
We attached a same plastic container to the end of the paper strips using a paper clip and added marbles until the paper began to tear.
These are the results of our test:

Type of paper Number of marbles(1) number of marbles (2) Average number of marbles Weight of marbles
Newspaper 46 42 44 220g
A4 paper 62 52 57 285g
Kitchen paper 33 28 31 155g
tissue 1 4 3 15g

This shows that A4 paper was the strongest paper.

Step 5
Rocket Launch

We got a film canister.
We put some water into it and then we added half a berocca tablet.
We put the lid on the canister and turned it upside down, placed it on the tar and stood back.
The dissolving tablet released CO2 that built up in the canister and caused it to fly up into the sky.