The children of Lismullen National School had the pleasure of a return visit from past pupil and scientist, Shauna McKelvey, for one of this year’s Science Week events. The Sinking Soda Surprise and The Floating Egg Experiment introduced junior infants to the concept of density. Why do diet drinks float and the regular drinks sink in regular tap water? We learned that the ingredient inside the can of regular soda that makes it so much heavier than diet soda is sugar, a shocking 10 tablespoons of sugar!
We also discovered that an egg will sink to the bottom of a regular glass of water, but when salt is added to the water density is increased. The experiment showed junior infants that with enough salt added to the water, the density of the water is heavier than the egg, allowing it to float.
Shauna explained that to measure acidity and alkalinity, we can use the pH scale. A Universal indicator was used to test how acidic or alkaline a solution was. We learnt that the many different colour changes of the Universal indicator shows the pH value of the solution. We had lots of fun matching the colour of the solution to the colours on the pH scale. Did you know that the pH scale runs from pH 0 to pH 14?
