St. Peter's Primary Bray Blog

Junior Infants did a fun science project! We went fishing with magnets! This was for our part in the school’s Discover Primary Science and Maths award.

Before we could go fishing however, we had lots to learn.

First we learned the difference between wood and metal.

A spoon is made from metal.

This peg is made from wood but has some metal in the middle keeping it together.

Cool!

We learned that kettles, cars and scissors have metal in them.

We saw that chairs, tables and rolling pins are made out of wood.

We filled out this sheet to show teacher that we could tell which objects are made out of metal and which objects are made out of wood.

Good job guys!

Next, we learned about pushing and pulling. We learned that whenever you push or pull you are using a “force.”

You push a buggy and you push a swing! We had great fun pushing things in the classroom to see what we could push!

We pulled the cap off teachers pen and we pulled the door open!

Liam from senior infants came in and showed us the pushing and pulling puppets that senior infants had made!

Next, we learned about magnets.

We learned that this is called a bar magnet!

We learned that the two ends of a magnet are called poles. The red end of the magnet is the north pole and the blue end of the magnet is the south pole!

Teacher told us that the poles that are the same are the “like” poles, and the poles that are a different colour are the “different” or “unlike” poles.

“Like” poles, the ones that are the same, try to get away from each other! They “repel.”

Different poles try to get near each other, they “attract.”

The different colour ends of the magnet, the north and south poles, stick easily to each other!

rrrrr, this brave girl is trying to force two like poles together!

These two are trying hard to push the two like poles together.

They manage to do it, but it takes all their strength! Do you see the N for North on the poles of the magnets?

Teacher told us that the invisible thing that is trying to get the magnets together (to attract) and trying to get the magnets apart (to repel) is called a “force”.

It’s a force like the one used in pushing and pulling!

But this one is a bit different and is called a “magnetic force”.

Look at these two magnets, called doghnut magnets because of their shape, sticking together.

Cool!

Teacher told us that metal sticks to a magnet! Some of us already knew this as we had seen it on “Toy Story” the movie!

She showed us some spoons and some metal shavings sticking to a magnet.

We filled out this sheet to show teacher that we understood that some objects don’t stick to a magnet but metal objects do!

The objects that are coloured in are the metal ones, the ones that stick to a magnet.

The key, the paperclip, the thumb tac and the scissors are the metal objects.

We wanted to test it for ourselves however…… so teacher said that we were going to go “fishing with magnets!!!!!”

So we made some beautiful fish!

If you look closely in this picture you will see a piece of a drinking straw in the mouth of one fish, the straw is made of plastic. The other fish has a piece of matchstick in it’s mouth, this is made of wood.

This fish has a paper fastner in it’s mouth. That is made of metal. We knew that already!

What a fancy fish.

So we had the fish, but what were we going to fish with? Teacher attatched a magnet onto some string.

If the magnet stuck to the fish, we would know that’s because it was the fish with metal in it’s mouth!

We already knew that the fish that had paper clips and paper fastners in it’s mouth were the ones with metal in them, so it was time to try to catch some fish!

We learned that in science however, it is important to record your experiments. We used what we knew about data to make this chart.

If you managed to catch a fish, you got a tick under the smiley face. If you had a few gos and then managed to catch a fish, you got a tick under the medium face. If you caught no fish you got a tick under the sad face.

Lets go fishing!

Caught one!

Tick!

hmmnnn, which fish will I go for?

Is there any with metal in their mouths?

One is coming……..

Yesssss!!!!!

My turn!

Hmnnnn, where are the ones with metal in their mouths?

Here!

Have one!

Oh no, it fell!

Here we realised that the fish with just one paperclip in it’s mouth was falling off the magnet! We couldn’t catch it! That was because the fish was too heavy. If we put more paperclips in the mouth of the fish, there would be more force attracting it to the magnet and it wouldn’t fall off!

Teacher said this happens sometimes in science experiments, you need to figure out what works and what doesn’t!

Woo hoo! Finally!

Yay!

Senior Infants came in to see our experiment.

They loved it!

We were making so much noise cheering whenever anyone got a fish, that Ms. Sexton came in to see what was going on!

She tried the fish with the plastic in it’s mouth!

Plastic doesn’t stick to a magnet Ms. Sexton! That’s not going to work! Try the metal!

Yay! See the metal paperclips in the mouth of the fish everybody?

Lots more fish were caught.

And here are the results from our experiment:

As you can see, 5 fish weren’t caught, and the rest were!

We love science!!! It is so much fun!!