Objective:
Child will understand the basics of conservation of matter.
Essential Question(s):
What happens when matter changes?
Is anything lost?
Does its weight change?
Special Materials:
A scale and/or a laser thermometer, pencil and paper for notes
Bricks Required:
6×8 plates; 1×2, 1×4, & 1×6 bricks
Project Structure
Engage/Explain:
- Ask child what they know regarding what happens when matter is heated or cooled or mixed together.
- Child may already be familiar with water breaking a jar when it’s frozen (cooled) or the chemical reaction of baking soda and vinegar.
- Explain that the total weight of the matter never changes in any of these situations.
Explore:
- Explain that child will see how that works today by building with bricks representing the molecules.
- Give child plates and bricks to build a hollow box.
- Size is not too important, but probably no more than five bricks high;
- The walls should not have any gaps or holes.
- When child is finished, ask them about the properties of the box.
- Child should weigh, measure, and take the temperature of their creation, taking notes on all the measurements.
- Child then disassembles their box and reassembles it into a different-shaped box, still with no gaps.
- Child weighs, measures, and takes the temperature again. Child should notice that the only measurement that changed significantly is the size.
- Child then puts their box in ice water and the sun, and then takes the temperature and weighs it again, taking notes on all the measurements.
Elaborate:
- Ask child how rebuilding the box is similar to what happens with water when it turns to steam and then condenses back to water.
- Extend the idea to other types of materials as well.