does it float or sink?

Another dull and dreary day in Port.. luckily it only rained a little bit because this weather is getting a bit ridiculous!!

I read a book to Jazz last night called " who sank the boat?" about a cow, pig, sheep, goat and a mouse who all try to get into boat. It doesnt sink until the mouse tips it over the edge. And so this morning we got to talking about what floats and what sinks and so we set up a simple experiment to test out our theories.

We started by testing out marbles, a tennis ball, matchsticks and paddlepop sticks. We each had a guess about whether it would float or sink before placing it in the water.
Jared thought this was pretty cool, watching in excited anticipation to see which way each thing would go.

Tennis balls float... they also splash everything when you drop them at height. Thanks for discovering that Amahli.

Phones (even rock phones) will never EVER float.

We then tested how many marbles would sink each tray. We talked about how it wasnt the mouse that actually sank the boat but all of them put together sank it. And so we had to guess how many marbles it would take to sink each lid.

The meat tray took the whole jar of marbles! The best thing about this part was when you move the marbles so its even amount on both sides, we couldnt get it to sink. Its only when they were all bunched up together that it sank.




It was such a simple fun sciencey thing to do with great results. He talked all day long about what else would float or sink and then found an activity on ABC kids website that showed him more ways to float and sink things.

All in all it was something fun to do to challenge little brains. That is until Jumeirah came home and wanted to do it all too and then asked me " Mum, if a plane weighs hundreds of kilos and is really heavy, why doesnt it sink??" which is where I told her " Thats a great question! Why dont you google it and find out and then work out a way to teach me??" :)