St. Patrick's National School Trim : STEM Challenges

Floating ping pong ball experiment

Scared Pepper Challenge

Our Dark Box Creation

How to make a dark box:

You will need:

Shoe box
Sheet of paper
Aluminium foil
Ruler
Pencil
Cutter
Scissors
Black paint
Paint brush
PVA glue
Needle

Step 1: Paint the inside of the box with the black paint.

Step 2: Once the paint is dry, with the ruler, measure the length from side to side, then make a 2cmx2cm square in the middle of the box and use the cutter to cut it off.

Step 3: Use the aluminium foil and cut off 2 2cmx2cm squares, with the tape, tape the squares on both of the square sides you cut off earlier.

Step 4: With the needle, make a small hole in the middle of both sides of the box.

Step 5: In the middle of the box, make the paper the height of the box, after that, make a line to where the paper goes from side to side inside the box, once that is done you have to stick the both sides with PVA glue.

What is a Dark box for?

For centuries the technique was used for viewing eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes and, by the 16^th century, as an aid to drawing; the subject was posed outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper for the artist to trace.

Emily O Donnell's floating paper clip experiment

Floating Lego Experiment!

Inertial eggs - discovering eggs & inertia

Jacob & Matthew's cardboard boat - supported a weight of 500g before sinking!

Oscar's Fire Extinguisher experiment!

DAVID CLARKE'S SCIENCE EXPERIMENT

Procedure:

Pour food colouring into a glass.

Add water.

Pick a white rose

Put the rose in the coloured water

Sit back and watch

After 2 hours

Next day

Results:

The rose turned blue

Conclusion:

The rose drinks the water and changes colour.

For my mini (quarantine) science experiment I attempted the “egg and bottle challenge”, this was an epic fail or I like to call it the “eggpic fail”.

The aim of this challenge was to get a full egg into a glass bottle without it breaking. 1. Get a pint glass of vinegar and leave a whole egg fully submerged in the vinegar for 2 days. 2. *2 days have passed* heat glass bottle. 3. Put egg sitting on the mouth of the bottle 4. Leave it for 2 hours and the egg should have slipped into the bottle (or at least have started to move into the neck of the bottle)

Now, for the science experiment that actually worked.
I attempted an experiment to show liquid densities. 1. First things first, get a skinny glass/test tube. 2. You will need; food colouring, honey, water, cooking oil, washing up liquid (a different colour to the food colouring). 3. Before adding the water you must first add your food colouring to the water (this is so you can see the water when it separates from the other liquids). Pour the same measure of each liquid into your glass/test tube- the order doesn’t matter. 4. Leave the liquids and wait for them to separate- this should only take a few minutes 5. You should now see all liquids separately in the glass

The liquids starting to separate

In these 2 photos you can see that all of the liquids have separated.

The liquids separate because they have different densities. Water sinks because it is more dense than oil. Solids are made from atoms and molecules, liquids are also made from atoms and molecules, which have a certain size and mass. The liquids that are more dense are heavier and will sink to the bottom and the liquids that are less dense will stay on top. Density is the reason the liquids separate.