Energy Science Experiment

I've had a CRAZY busy week so sorry for not posting more! My kiddos and I are talking about energy in science right now and we are having so much fun with it. Today we were talking about heat energy and so we did an experiment with ice. We discussed why ice melts and then made predictions for how long we think it would take to melt. Then we broke into groups and each group got an ice cube that they were supposed to try to melt as quickly as possible. It was so fun to see the strategies the kids came up with!!

This is the page the students used to fill out their predictions, the actual time, and what the group did to make the ice melt faster. Sorry, I got it from some old book years ago... but it should be easy to reproduce if you want to.

After the experiment, we had a class discussion about why the ice melted faster for some groups and not others. We started with the group that got their ice to melt in 5 minutes. They told us they rubbed it and blew on it. This lead to a discussion about how both of those strategies create heat. Then other groups shared their strategies and we discussed whether or not they made the ice melt faster. As we went along, the students realized that the strategies that created heat made the ice melt faster. And the ones that didn't create heat, didn't make it melt much faster.

Tomorrow we are going to try and prevent ice from melting. I can't wait to see what they come up with! :)