Unbelievable Oobleck

So we decided to go a bit 'Crazy Scientist' this week and had a TREMENDOUS amount of fun ......(and made a TREMENDOUS mess!)....but hey, all in the name of science right? We had the stupendous Mrs S (Abby's mum) come and help us once again with her amazing scientific expertise.

We have started learning all about mixtures this term and wanted to investigate further how different ingredients would react when mixed together. Firstly, we read the book 'Bartholomew and the Oobleck' by Dr Seuss on the iPad. You can download the app at home or listen to it below!

After this, we thought it would be super fun to make our own oobleck to see what it would look, feel and smell like. We made a hypothesis as to what we thought might happen at each stage of our investigation and then followed the procedure to find out if our predictions were correct! This is the procedure we followed:

Step 1:  Collect your equipment and set up your work space.

Step 2: Pour the ¼ cup of cornflour into your mixing bowl.

Step 3: Add one tablespoon of water and 1 drop of food colouring to your cornflour and mix.    Record your observations.     

Step 4: Add another tablespoon of water to your cornflour mixture and record your observations. Continue adding a tablespoon of water and mixing until you have added 4-5 tablespoons.

Check out our Oobleck slime pictures below...

Some of the observations we made were:

- when we hit it or push hard on it, the oobleck feels hard, but if we are gentle with it it flows like a liquid.

- The cornflour and water were very hard to mix

- The food colouring spread with the more water we added

- You can scrunch it into a solid ball, but when you open your hand it melts away!

Mrs S explained to us that the molecules in cornstarch are very long but small. When we add water to it, the cornflour molecules can move freely like a liquid, but if we put pressure on the mixture (by pushing with our hand or stirring), it pushes all the water to the edge of the mixture and the cornflour molecules cannot move freely so it behaves more like a solid.

Happy Sliming!

Tremendous T4