Magnets!

The past 2 weeks in science we talked about magnets! I love it when we get to our magnet unit, it’s one of my favorites! Buckle in, this is going to be a long one!The first thing we did was watch our magnet BrainPOP and took the quiz at the end.

Then, later in the week, the kids sorted pictures of different objects into what they thought would be magnetic and not magnetic.

After we sorted our objects, the kids went back to their tables and did a magnet lab to see which objects were magnetic and which were nonmagnetic.

One of the girls notices that the magnet could attract the objects through the plastic

Once the kids tested the 6 items on their papers and the other 4 that we had on our pocket chart (that were around the room), we moved on to a science lab where we tried to get iron fillings to move in test tubes using different liquids. Mrs. Sturdivant’s class came over and joined us for that lab. It was SO much fun!

For our lab, we used iron fillings, test tubes, glass bottles, water, oil, corn syrup and honey.

After we saw just what the iron and magnet could do, we tested our iron fillings in the test tubes! First we put just iron fillings into a tube to see if we could even move it around through the plastic. When that worked, we tried the same amount of iron in test tubes of water, vegetable oil, corn syrup, honey and a mix of water and oil (because I thought it was cool to let the kids see how water and oil won’t mix and look at the iron move through both liquids.)

Our iron moved pretty well with the iron by itself and when it was nothing but water inside.

When we put it in oil, we weren’t able to grab as much of it as we had before.

 

When we added corn syrup to our iron fillings, it was REALLY hard to get it to move around.

And the most difficult liquid was the honey. The iron stuck to the honey and moved around while it was stuck inside! It was really cool to see. 

The last mixture we tried was water and oil together.

And once we were done with the test tubes, we tried a glass bottle to see if what the container was made out of and its thickness would make a difference.

The second week of magnets (which was a short week because it was really only 3 days of teaching with us having Santa's Village, Christmas Parties and a half day), we had magnet car races, and did some Star Wars magnetic science!

Star Wars science? YES! I'm a HUGE Star Wars nerd, so when I saw this gem in Target over the summer, I knew I had to get it for science this year! Thankfully, I got a class full of Star Wars lovers just like me! Out first week of magnets was really all about attraction, so this week was about repulsion. The kids each got a turn making the foil piece repel through the air with the force levitator.

 

Our last day of magnets, we had magnet car races! I glued super magnets onto the tops of little plastic cars I got at Target that were 2 for a dollar over the summer. The kids had to figure out which end of their magnetic wand repelled the magnet on the car, then raced to see which team could get it from one end of the table to the other the fastest!