Surface tension is awesome. We filled a translucent cup with water and talked about how if we added more water, it would surely overflow. Then I produced a handful of paper clips, and we hypothesized that adding metal paper clips would cause the water to spill out as well. Jonas, Susannah, and I all took turns adding one paper clip at a time, and guess what? It never did overflow! (According to the directions, it eventually should have, but we didn’t have enough paperclips.)
To experience evaporation, we dipped both hands into a pitcher of water. Then we held one hand still and waved the other hand through the air (some of us waved more enthusiastically than others). Can you believe that the waved hands dried faster than the still hands?
We went inside for the next part of our experiment. A pan full of ice + heat from the stove = water! A pan full of water + continued heat from the stove = steam! We talked a little bit about molecules, but that’s a little beyond the 3-6 year old brain, so I didn’t harp on it too much.
