Project 61: Scientific Enquiry

During Project 43: Museums we bought Monica Learn with Peppa First Science from the Science Museum, and decided to use it's simple experiments as the basis for this week's project.

Learn with Peppa: First Science

We've done a number of science projects previously (Project 19: Science and chemistry, Project 30: Electricity, Project 37: Metals, Project 54: More Chemistry!), and we took the project as an opportunity to revisit the process of scientific enquiry. We started by reading about scientific enquiry in the Junior Illustrated Science Dictionary, which actually provoked surprisingly interesting questions about the differences between primary and secondary resources and the sharing of data online.

Most of the time was spent on the 11 experiments in the book, of which we completed 8. Each experiment introduces a key concept, such as weight, states of matter, sound waves, light, gravity, and buoyancy. As well as doing the experiments, where appropriate we also explored the concepts further. For example, looking at the whole of the electromagnetic wave spectrum and seeing how visible light is just a small part. Whereas the children had experience of infrared from the sensor in the Nintendo Switch controller, we created our blacklight to highlight ultraviolet light.

Highlighter pen under a homemade blacklight

Finally we got them to design their own experiment, and explore an aspect of their local community. They decided to explore the frequency of different coloured cars going along a local busy road. They particularly liked that they could make it into a competition, with each of them picking the colour they thought would be most frequent. Solomon won. 

Tally of car colours on the Oundle Road

Next week: Money!