Fried or boiled?

Take one freshly-laid egg (feather optional).

Tap it gently to crack the shell, and slither it out onto a plate.

What’s it like?  What are the properties of a raw egg?

• slimy
• slippery
• soft
• see-through
• transparent
• wet
• nearly liquid

What about if we heat it?  Will it change – and if so how? 

Well, there’s only one way to find out (as we are so fond of saying!)  Let’s get some butter bubbling in the pan.  Slide in the egg and watch what happens.

What’s it like?  What are the properties of a cooked egg?

• a bit harder
• no longer see-through
• opaque
• solid
• has bubbles

Now; here’s something to ponder.  If we leave it overnight, what will happen?  Will it

• stay the same
• go back to how it was before we cooked it
• change in another way

Take a look; here is our egg after a night in a (warm) classroom.  What do you notice?

What’s it like – sugar?

Take one bag of sugar.

Pour a little heap out in front of you and take a closer look; use all your senses. 

Take an even closer look using the microscope. 

What’s it like – sugar?

• solid (even though you can pour it)
• white
• dull
• opaque
• looks like ice cubes
• sweet
• crunchy

What do you think will happen when we heat it?  Will it stay the same or change in some way?  Well there’s only one way to find out!

Dump some into a pan (whoa that was fast Quentin!)

Place the pan on the hob and heat.

Now be very careful; it is going to get H O T !  But keep a watchful eye on it.  What do you notice happening?

What’s it like – sugar?

• yellowish-brown
• lumpy
• stuck together
• solid
• dull
• opaque
• sweet…..

Keep watching; keep stirring…..

What’s it like – sugar?

• darker brown
• shiny
• opaque
• a liquid

Now – pour it out into a slippery greasy pan…..

and allow it to cool.

What do you think will happen?  Will it stay the same, go back to how it was before we heated it or change in some other way?

What’s it like – sugar?

• translucent
• hard
• a solid
• brittle, like glass

What’s it like – sugar?

Oh and I did have one more question.  What do you think will happen if you leave it in the classroom overnight?  Sadly though, we didn’t get to find out.  It was very  sweet you see…..

What’s it like – jelly?

Take a couple of packets of jelly.  Blackcurrant for preference (as that’s far and away my favourite flavour).

Marvel in the jewel-like colour and bouncy, chewy texture.  Marvel too in the taste if you’d like to!

 

Lose yourself in reverie temporarily as you dream of birthday parties and balloons and lashings of ginger beer…..

Oops – now snap back to the moment.

What’s it like – jelly?  A sticky, stretchy, translucent and sweet solid.

More to the point; what’s it for – jelly?

Well in the UK, we make our jelly using solid concentrated cubes like this.  We add hot water to melt the jelly so that it becomes a liquid, before ‘setting’ it in a cool place, turning it back from a liquid to a solid again.

Question.  Will jelly melt in as quickly in water that is not hot?  Let’s see.

You and your partner will need these things:

· one cup of cold water (let’s call her Katie Cold Water)

· one cup of hot water (Harry Hot Water)

· two jelly cubes

· two stirring spoons

· one stopwatch

This is a RACE Tommy.  A race between Katie Cold Water and Harry Hot Water.  To see who is able to melt the jelly soonest.

This is what to do.

· put one jelly cube into the hot water

· at the same time put one jelly cube into the cold water

· stir each 20 times

· press the start button on the stopwatch

· as soon as a jelly cube dissolves press the lap button on the timer and record the time

So; what did we find out? 

• That jelly melts fastest in hot water – to find out how fast, look at our results table where we have recorded the times. 
• That a jelly cube dropped into cold water (poor old Katie Cold) had not even started to dissolve by the end of the school day.

We noticed some bubbles had attached themselves to the jelly cube.

And perhaps, if you look really closely, just the hint of a tinge of pink to the water.

Sadly (!) a planned demonstration rather-too-close-to-the-school-for-comfort put paid to Friday’s observations, so we will have to wait until after the weekend to see whether poor old Katie Cold managed to ‘melt’ her jelly cube.

Do you think she will have managed it by then?

Let’s indulge in a bit of sculpture

Take one soft warm ball of pre-kneaded plasticine.  Now, delve into that big inviting plastic bucket of metal nails and screws and metal keys and hinges and metal bolts and brackets and nuts.  And wire and paperclips and split pins.

Take a big handful of all things metal.  And let your imagination run wild as you sculpt your very own creation.

 

Maybe you like the idea of an abstract forest of screws.

Perhaps you would prefer to create something more realistic; an animal.  A rabbit, maybe.

Or an animal that comes more from the imagination.

What about something that might have come from outer space?

We were lucky enough to have a spell of the most glorious sunshine during the photographing stage of the proceedings.

 

 

If these pictures have intrigued you, why not pay a visit to the Class 2i art gallery?

Plasticine – what it’s like

Take a look at this…..

What’s it like?

Well (apart from its greenness) it is cool and quite hard, although if you dig your fingernail into it, you will leave a mark.

Ok.  Now roll it into a ball.

Not easy, is it?  But beaver away.  Squash and squish it.

Roll it round and round.

Pull it; tug it; stretch it.

Roll it into a long snake.

A longer snake.

An even longer snake.

What do you notice about its texture now?  About its temperature?  (Remember how one of the places most sensitive to temperature is just above your lip.)

Are the properties the same now as they were when we began?

No – now the plasticine is warm and soft and no longer cool and hard.  Easy to squish into a ball.

Incidentally.  The word plasticine has a bit of a clue.  But have you ever thought about what materials plasticine is made from?

Plastic; a man-made material made from oil.  Plasticine; a man-made material with petroleum jelly (petrol; oil) as one of its ingredients.

So, what’s it like – plasticine?

Apart from being something that makes your hands go red…..(or blue or green)

More to the point; what can it be used for?