Keeping with our theme of Easter we decided to do an experiment using eggs! I laid out the materials we would be using during the experiment to aid discussing throughout (an egg, salt, a bowl of water and a spoon).
First, we discussed and predicted whether an egg would float or sink when put into a bowl of water. We then put this to the test! We all predicted correctly with great ideas behind why this happened- the main one being that the egg was heavy!
The children were then asked ‘how could we get this egg to float in the water?’. The children were encouraged to think of ideas using materials at the top of the room. They decided to add salt to the water. There were many ideas behind this including the following:
- ‘The salt grains will push the egg to the top of the bowl’
- ‘Boats can float on the ocean and that has salt in it’
- ‘The salt will make the water heavier than the egg’.
We began testing the ideas by adding one spoonful of salt to the water at a time and mixing it in.
It took each group approximately 11/12 teaspoons of salt to get their egg to float! We learnt that adding salt to the water makes it more ‘dense’ than the egg which makes it float.
Check out our floating eggs at the end!
