Reply To: Module 1 – The Curious Minds/ESERO Framework

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Rachael Donnellan
Participant

    Hi, my name is Rachael. I will be teaching Senior Infants. I am excited to learn more about how space can be taught in my class next year. My favourite space fact is that the surface of the sun is 60 times hotter than boiling water.
    An inquiry-based activity that I would like to do with my class is ‘Dancing Raisins’. I will give each group two glasses- one glass of water and one glass of 7-up. I will give the children some raisins each and we will discuss what we think will happen when we put the raisins into the water- will they float/ will they sink? Will they move? Etc. Discuss what they think will happen when they put the raisins into the 7-up. They will then all get a turn at putting some of the raisins into each glass. They will see that the water has no affect on the raisins- the raisins just sink to the bottom and in the glass with the 7-up the raisins should be ‘dancing’ up and down. I would give out a sheet with an image of two glasses- one with a glass of water and one 7-up. The children will draw what happened during their experiment.
    We will also discuss why the raisins were moving. When you first drop the raisins in the soda they sink to the bottom of the glass because they are more dense than the soda. But the carbonated soda releases carbon dioxide bubbles and these bubbles love to attach to the rough surface of the raisins. They act like tiny floatation devices that lift the raisin to the surface of the water. This is due to an increase in buoyancy. Once the carbon dioxide bubbles reach the surface of the soda they pop and the gas is released into the air. This makes the raisin lose buoyancy and fall back down to the bottom of the glass.

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