Discovery Science – Step 5 – Show and Tell

In Abi’s experiment, titled ‘Battery Power’, the bottom of 2 lead pencils were attached to a battery. The pencil tips were dipped in water. Bubbles formed at both pencil tips. More bubbles formed at the tip of the pencil attached to the negative part of the battery. Most of the bubbles were hydrogen and a few oxygen. The pencil tip where hydrogen was forming was attached to the negative part of the battery and the pencil tip where oxygen was forming was attached to the positive part of the battery.

In this experiment titled, ‘Selecting the best paper for separating colours in chromatography’, Maebh cut strips of different paper (equal in length) and dipped them in water. Members of the class formed a hypothesis to guess which paper would allow the colour to transfer best (tussue, card, paper or coffee filter paper). The class came to the conclusion that the coffee filter paper worked best.

In Cian’s experiment, the water and mirror acted like a prism, splitting the light into the colours of the spectrum (when light passes from one
medium to another, for example from air to water, its speed and direction change; this is called refraction.) The different colours of light spread out, separated and the spectrum could be seen clearly!