To kick of science week in the middle classroom, we investigated what makes objects sink or float.
We discovered that an unpeeled orange floats in water. We thought that this was because there is air between the skin and the flesh.
We decided to peel the orange to test our theory and see if it would still float.
We found that the peeled orange sank, but not all the way to the bottom of the bucket. This meant that there was still some air trapped in the orange.
To investigate where that air was trapped, we separated the orange into segments.
We placed the segments into the bucket and found that most of them sank to the bottom.
We concluded that there was air trapped in the middle of the orange, where the segments joined together.
Our final task was to try to make the segments float. We used the orange peel like a raft for the orange segment.
Our investigation proved that trapped air makes objects float.
The orange peel pieces also floated. We thought that this was because they were light and didn’t allow water to pass through.
We are really looking forward to the rest of Science Week. Stay tuned for more of our experiments during the week!
Craggagh NS 