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Saturday, July 10, 2010

Up & Down Raisins

Note from Mom: Sorry to mess up the schedule...I've been too sick to help Jake with his experiments and blog - we are going to make up for it this week!

Today, we decided to use an experiment from The Usborne Big Book of Science. We chose an experiment involving soda and raisins. The plan was to fill a clear glass with soda - in our case we just used soda water. Then we dropped 5 raisins into it. Jake hypothesized that the raisins would drop to the bottom of the glass. To his surprise, the raisins went to the bottom, rose, and after a a few seconds fell to the bottom again...kind of bouncing up and down over and over again until there weren't enough bubbles left...of course this took some time :)

Jake learned that the bubbles in soda are made of carbon dioxide. The bubbles are not as heavy as the liquid part of the soda so the bubbles carry the raisin to the top of the soda. As the bubbles burst, the raisin lowers back to the bottom, only to have more bubbles attach themselves and rise again!