Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Colo/u/r

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Experimenting is the greatest opportunity to learn the 'what if's' and 'why's'. Recently, Mateo and I have been learning about matter: solids, liquids and gases. Freezing water, evaporating water, and working out how the clouds collect all that rain water. Mateo has since become obsessed with putting things in the freezer to see if their states will transform the way water turns to ice. We have frozen all sort of things - paper airplane's, clay balls in water - but the pinnacle of our freezing escapades has been our colored ice sculptures.

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We added food coloring to water and froze it over night in random shaped containers. Mateo was so excited to find these blocks of colored ice in the morning. VoilĂ ! - pure magic in his eyes.

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We adhered the ice chunks together with salt. Mateo was amazed to find that salt melts ice.

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We watched in fascination as salty little rivulets cut grooves into the ice's surface. The melted, tinted water then pooled at the bottom of each sculpture and blended together into new, more beautiful colors.

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Continuing with color... While out trash picking one day, Tom and Mateo found part of an old school pencil sharpener attached to a desk dumped in a neighbor's yard. So they snagged it and spent the afternoon together sharpening colored pencils to create mounds of shavings dusted with layer upon layer of color.

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Mmmmm!

(via www.transitantenna.com)

3 comments:

Ariella said...

I love these photos! Your ice experiment turned out to be both beautiful and informative. Love it!

Linda said...

Hi there,
Thank you so much for visiting my blog:) Your ice experiment is beautiful. I look forward to reading your blog posts:)

Amanda said...

Your pictures have such great texture! What a great lesson for you son. I live in AZ and we love making things with ice around here on hot days, now I have to remember to add some color! Thanks for sharing!

blessings
Amanda