Science in a van visit

Date: 2/5/17

Today we had a visit from the awesome people from ‘Science in a Van’, ’Allan and Emma’. The morning started with some fun science tricks where Emma pulled a tablecloth from underneath a jug of water and 2 empty cups. She asked a teacher aid to come up and do the tablecloth trick. Emma told us that there can’t be friction because then the cups would fall off. But she was using the pulling and pushing forces. Next Allan went on stage and got a board hanging by 4 strings in a pyramid shape.

A while later the people who Payed $3 got to see more tricks. Allan got 5 volunteers to use the 5 senses. He put blindfolds on of four of us and we had to figure out (by using our senses) what we were seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling and hearing. We were also used to work out what things are e.g. the difference between wood and ice cream.

Next we found out that cans with hot water, gas and aluminium can implode when dunked into cold water. It only had bit of water and gas it though (CO2).

After that Alan made dry ice explode in some containers. He put the dry ice in the sealed container and Within a few seconds then it would pop up and the bottle and fill it would  first up to the roof and fall back down again.

He also put dry ice into a water bottle and it made a cloud. This cloud burst out of the water bottle lid and it kept going for about 5 minutes then died down. It was a Cloud of CO2, Straight from solid to gas. We found out CO2 doesn’t like liquid.

Soon he  called out one of our teachers and got her to sit down the chair. He put some water in a cup then into the next then into the next. The water was in the third Cup. He shuffles the cups around but only the cups without the water in. Then we had to pick which cup to tip on her head which was the third Cup. That one was the cup with the water inside, except when we turned it upside down nothing came out. we looked inside and found the water was stuck in the cup. He told us that he used a powder called sodium polyacrylate, It soaks up the same amount of liquid as me drinking 25,000 litres of water in one second.

I learnt that there are 3 states of matter

1. Solid
2. Liquid
3. Gas

I also learned that Hot aluminium dunked into cold water makes the can implode. There was a bit of water and gas in the the can as well.

Another cool thing I learnt was when we mix dried ice and water it makes clouds that burst out of the bottle. It looked really cool.

Also I found out Dried ice that is put in a sealed container = explosion. The container will fly up to the roof very fast.

I had a really great time watching ‘Science in a Van’. I learnt lots of new, interesting, information about states of matter and I would highly recommend it to anyone else who had the opportunity to watch it. Here is a link to Science in a van.