During our Materials and their Properties topic, Year 5 pupils have been investigating how to speed up the rate of evaporation.  Pupils made predictions about what they knew about the evaporation already, such as drying clothes/paint.  Following this we set up apparatus to compare the rate of evaporation for beakers with and without a lid, containers with different sized openings and containers kept in different temperatures.  The children were then able to conclude which conditions increased the speed of evaporation. 

Another experiment was testing to see how long a candle would stay alight after covering it with different sized beakers.  Most children predicted that the larger beaker would allow the flame to remain for the longest time and discovered that it was because of the amount of oxygen.  We looked at the fire triangle but this raised some interesting questions.  Bailey (5E) asked, ‘If a fire needs oxygen then why does it go out when we blow on a candle, yet we also blow on it to help start the fire?’  This prompted some fascinating discussions!