Ice & Snow Experiments

Ice & snow Experiments

With the onset of winter, the students have been excited about the snow and ice, so we decided to do some experiments with the wintery white stuff.  The first experiment we did was called Boiling Water and Cold Air.  The question I asked was:  What do you think will happen if I through hot water out the window into the freezing cold air? 

Here are some of their predictions:

Alexandra:  “It will turn to ice.”

Evan: “It will turn to fog or ice.” 

Emma:  “It will colour the snow.”

Jersey: “It will turn to snow, I saw it.”

I then tossed the water out the window while the students watched and it turned to snow.  I asked them what they thought would happen if I were to use cold water instead.  Some children thought that the same thing would happen and some thought nothing would happen.  The water fell into the snow and turned into ice.

The next experiment was Instant Snow.  I started with a packet of instant snow powder and asked the students:  What do you think will happen if I add water to this white powder.  Here are some of their thoughts:

Brady:  “The water will go white.”

Paige:  “It will turn to ice.”

Josey: “It will turn to snow.”

After we made predictions, I added the water and the powder expanded and turned into fluffy white stuff that looked like snow.  They were really amazed!

The next question I posed was:  What do we know about ice?  The students had a variety of responses, here are a few:

Brady:  “Ice is slippery. “

Emma: “Ice is colourful.”

Alexandra:  “Ice is cold and white.”

Jersey:  “Ice melts.”

In the next experiment, I set up four plastic cups.  One had hot water, one had cold water, one had salt and the other had nothing.  I told them that I was going to put an ice cube in each cup.

We made some predictions about which cube they thought would melt first. 
Camryn:  “I think the ice will melt in the cold water.”

Jack:  “The salt one.”

Miya: “The salt.”

Sarah: “The hot water.” 

In the Big Block of Ice experiment, I froze a big block of ice and put it into a container.  The students had a chance to feel it and talk about what they were feeling. 

Some of the words the students were using to describe the ice were:  smooth, slippery, hard, and cold. I asked them what they think would happen if I put salt on the ice.  They had some background knowledge from the previous experiment, so many thought it would melt.  But a few others had some other ideas:

Josey and Evan:  “I think the ice will crack.”

Alexandra:  “There will be lots of water around it.”

I added the salt in four piles and told them to listen carefully, and we could immediately hear the ice cracking.  I then added four different food colours to the salt piles and we watched what happened. 

We continued to observe the salt melting the ice and we could see cracks in the ice and the food colouring was seeping into the cracks.