Oobleck Is Good For You
Not to eat, of course.
Over the past couple of days in Science, students have been practicing what it means to be a scientist. They have been exploring the scientific process, experimenting, asking big questions and being creative. We started the process with experimenting on how to make paper airplanes go further. On Thursday, students were given a mysterious substance supposedly found in Mr. H’s backyard. We had a great time experimenting with it and studying it’s properties. Do you remember what properties are? We can find the properties of objects around us by using our 5 senses; what we see, feel, hear, smell and taste. So,
Properties are the things or words we use to describe different objects so we can tell them apart.
We played with and investigated the properties of Oobleck to help us understand what made Oobleck different from other substances like water or play-do. The students had some wonderful properties you discovered as you worked with the Oobleck.
We then held a scientific convention to decide upon some “truths” about Oobleck and come up with a set of laws that were true about Oobleck. We are now in the design phase of the process.
Oobleck, of course, is a real substance. It’s very distinctive property of being both a solid and a liquid has made Scientists curious for a long time. When left alone, Oobleck will act like a liquid. However, when squeezed, hit or pushed on, it will suddenly act like a solid, cracking and breaking under pressure. Scientists still do not know why it does this but they do know that Oobleck is a mixture of 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water.
If you have lots of time and lots of Oobleck, you could do this:
Here is a video showing what Oobleck does when you put it on top of a very loud speaker!!! What do you notice? Would water do this is you did the same thing? Why don’t you try it and find out?
This week is the start of our Bible Memory Verses for Homework. Our two verses are below. We are doing something different this year with the Bible Memory verses. All grades 4-6 will be studying the same verses. We are doing this for a couple of reasons. First of all, it helps families with more than one student in the intermediate to have their children working on the same verse. Secondly, we are working on building a distinctive identity for the intermediate department and this helps us to build unity and a common purpose. I will hear the student’s memory verses on Friday.