Science Fun Results!

Friday morning our science groups got together and planned out how we were going to test our hypotheses that answered the question, "What happens to a bag full of water when you poke it with a pencil?" Some of them included:

• Nothing will happen and the water will stay in the bag.
• The water will leak out around the pencil.
• The water will gush out of the bag.

Some groups chose to use one bag, other groups chose to use two. Some groups decided to leave their pencils in, others decided to take their pencils out. And some left the pencils in one and took the pencils out of the other. We were excited to carry out our experiment so Friday afternoon we talked about how to do the test safely, and then we went outside and had some fun. Who knew scientists have so muchfun????

After we finished the experiment, we made a TON of observations! They included:

• If you left the pencil in the bag the water stayed in the bag!
• If you pulled the pencil out, the water came out but it only leaked it didn't gush out.
• Even if you poked the bag just a little bit the water would drip out the tiniest hole.
• The only way the water would gush out of the bag was if you squeezed it.
• After you took the pencil out, if you put it back into the exact spots the water stopped leaking.

We used this data to come up with some solutions about what you could do with plastic bags that got holes in them. One group said that you could just throw them away and get a new one, but others didn't like that idea because it's not good for the environment. 

Another group said that you could patch the bag, and several friends chimed in with different materials you could use to patch the bag: scotch tape, packing tape, and duct tape were some suggestions. This led to people chiming in that we could do another experiment to see which one worked best.

Finally, a group said that we could double up the bag, but then a friend mentioned that if the top bag leaked your sandwich would still get wet. So he wanted to test different ways to double up bags to see which ones worked the best.

For Mrs. Towsen, Miss Conrad, and I the most exciting part of our first experience with the scientific process was that our students got a first hand look at how one experiment easily and seamlessly leads scientists to tests other things. So if your child came home and asked to punch some holes and tape them up with different things, he or she was just being a scientist!