Poor Teddy has lost his coat. He has asked Senior Infants to help him make a new one but he is not sure which is the best material he should make his coat from. He wants one that will protect him from getting wet if it rains. Should it be made from… foil? plastic? paper? We helped Teddy out by testing these materials to find out.
In small groups, we placed a dry cube into a cup and then covered each cup with foil on the top using an elastic band, plastic and tinfoil. We made predictions about which materials we thought would be waterproof and which would not be. Then we poured some water on each cup to see if it would keep the cube in the cup dry or wet.
We made sure to pour the same amount of water on each cup with a dropper to make our experiment fair.
Our findings were: the water soaked completely through the tissue paper. The plastic kept each cube completely dry and the tinfoil kept each cube dry but one group found that it tore easily so therefore it wet their cube.
As a class we decided that Teddy should make a coat out of plastic to help keep him dry from rain. One child added that he should stick cotton wool on the inside of it to help keep him warm as well.
