St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Hello, we are Ms. Brennan’s 2^nd Class. This is our first time to do the Discover Primary Science and Maths Project. We are really excited. We completed part two of the project where we designed and made experiments from the Materials strand. We made Lava Lamps. We made a big one for the class and then we all made ones to bring home. We hope you like our project.

How to make a lava lamp

What you need

1.  375ml Vegetable oil

2.  125ml water

3.  2 measuring jugs – one for water and one for oil

4.  500ml clear plastic bottle

5.  Funnel

6.  Food colouring and dropper

7.  A tablet that fizzes in water (e.g. Alka-Seltzer)

Skills we used for this experiment

1. Predicting

2. Experimenting

3. Observing

4. Analysing

What we were taught before we did the experiment

1. Chemical energy is energy that is released during chemical reactions.

2. Alka-Seltzer tablets contain two chemicals (citric acid and bread soda) which form a chemical reaction when they meet water, producing carbon dioxide gas as one of its products.

3. Alka-Seltzer does not dissolve in oil.

4. Oil and water do not mix. Oil is lighter than water so it sits on top of water when it is added.

5. The food colouring does not dissolve in oil and is heavier than oil, so it falls through the oil down to the water and mixes with the water.

Questions Ms. Brennan asked us

1. Can you name some of the different kinds of energy?

I know magnetic, electrical, sound, light, heat, movement/kinetic, chemical, nuclear energy –

Dylan and Lex

2.Where do you get your energy from?

Food and sleep! –

Adam

3. How do you get energy from food?

Your body breaks down the food and releases energy! –

Cathal

4. Do you think oil and water mix?

No! –

TJ

5. When oil spills from a ship in the ocean where does it go?

It will stay on the beach –

John

6. Which do you think will be on top and which on the bottom when you put them both in a

bottle?

We discovered that the oil stays on top –

Szymon

7. What happens to our tablets when you put them into water?

They will go all fizzy! –

Arturas

Steps to make a lava lamp

1. Firstly we got our 500ml empty bottles of water and poured 125ml of water into it.

2. Then we put 375ml of vegetable oil into the bottle.

3. After that we put 10 drops of food colouring into the bottle.

4. Then you put a half of an AS tablet into the bottle.

5. It makes a lava lamp!

How does it work?

1. The oil doesn’t mix with the water.

2. The food colouring doesn’t mix in the oil, just the water.

3. The food colouring will rise in bubbles and make a lamp effect.

4. The bubbles rise and mix with the AS tablet to make a chemical reaction!

The Maths in our project

1. We used capacity sums to make our experiment work.

2. We discovered that bottles we drink in everyday are 500ml.

3. Half of this bottle is 250ml and a quarter is 125ml.

4. We used measuring jugs.

5. We counted the drops of food colouring.

6. We did value for money word problems about our project.

7. We measured the height of our lava lamps.

Step 1: First we got our 500ml empty water bottle and poured 125ml of water into it.

Step 2: Then we put 375ml of vegetable oil into the bottle.

Step 3: After that we put 10 drops of food colouring into the bottle.

Step 4: Then you put half of an AS tablet into it.

We are delighted with our Lava Lamps!

Proof of our work!

Our diagrams!

Writing up our experiment!

Writing up our scientific notes!

Conclusion

Thank you for reading our project. We hope you enjoyed it! We look forward to doing another project again soon.