Spring…

It’s been such a long winter! Only one month left!

I want spring already…

-kittycat501

Science Fair

I just had my eighth grade science fair at my school, and my experiment was quite interesting.

My partner, Jenny, and I observed the differences between the reactions of two kinds of bar soap when microwaved for a certain time. The two bar soaps we microwaved were Dial, and Ivory.

First, we microwaved each soap for one minute, and the second time for two minutes.  The Ivory soap puffed up like Souffle, and the Dial soap flattened like a pancake.

Why did this happen? When Ivory soap is being made in the factory, air is pumped into it, resulting in several air bubbles inside the soap. When the soap is microwaved, the air molecules gain more Kinetic energy, and move faster and farther apart from each other, causing the soap to expand. This demonstrates Charles’ Law, which states “As the temperature of a gas increases, so does its volume.”

Ivory – Before Microwaving

Ivory – After Microwaving

The Dial soap, on the other hand, does not contain as many air bubbles. Therefore, it just melted and flattened onto the plate.

Dial – Before Microwaving

Dial – After Microwaving

-kittycat501

Spiked Tree Branches

When I woke up in the morning a few days ago, the first thing I saw through my window was trees and bushes caked in ice.  When I took a closer look, I notices that the ice had formed a spiky formation on branches and twigs.

What I heard was that if there is fog on a day in which the temperature is below freezing,  you get these cool formations. Fog is made of water droplets. If the temperature is below freezing, the droplets a cooled, allowing them to remain a liquid in the air. After the droplets touched a freezing surface, they froze in that position and shape, creating these formations.

-kittycat501