Kayla and Tiffany's experiment on "Race with Beads"

Tiffany and I chose to do an experiment on "racing beads." The materials needed for this small, easy experiment is a beaker, butter, a straw, one wooden spoon, one metal spoon, one plastic spoon, and 4 beads.



To start the experiment, you begin by putting a dab of butter on each end of the spoons and the straw. Next, you place all four of the beads onto the butter so that they will stick. The, you place all four of the materials inside the beaker with the beads sicking out.


The next step is to pour in some hot water into the beaker and observe on which of the materials the butter melts the fastest causing the bead to fall to the water.

As you can begin to see in this picture, the butter on the metal spoon is beginning to melt and the pink bead is beginning to slightly run sown the spoon. All the beads on the other two spoons and the straw have not changed any. And of course, as you may have guessed, the bead stuck onto the metal spoon won the race!

These are some observations that were made while testing the experiment.

Meatal is a good heat conductor. As the hot water it added, the metal spoon takes on the heat and causes the butter to melt. The melted butter causes the bead to run down the spoon. The other spoons and straw, plastic and wood, are not as great heat conductors and the hot water isn't absorb into the spoon as fast and doesn't cause the butter to melt as quickly. Metals are the best conducors of heat because the atoms in metals are closely packed together. When the heat touches the meatal spoon, it cause the atoms to viberate faster and faster, causing the heat to transfer throughout the spoon.

More information: http://www.apqj64.dsl.pipex.com/sfa/id81.htm

Standards for a 2nd grade classroom:

GLE 0207.9.1 Use tools to observe the physical properties of objects.
GLE 0207.9.2 Investigate how temperature changes affect the state of matter.

Check out Carla's page for other experiments with heat.