Experiment With Water Drops
This simple science experiment offers a hands-on approach to learning how water droplets can form different shapes
Before You Play
Explain to your child that more than half of our bodies are made up of water, and that every living thing needs water to survive. Ask your child to name places where we might see water. Then ask about different ways we use water. In this activity, your child can play with water to observe its properties, including how it looks and moves.
Materials
Directions
Explain to your child that you are going to look at small drops of water to see how they move and forms different shapes.
Give your child a piece of wax paper to put on a tray or baking sheet. Demonstrate how to fill an eyedropper then release the water, drop by drop. Let your child experiment with the eye dropper. Ask: What happens when you hold the eyedropper high above the tray to squirt water? What happens when you squirt the dropper close to the surface of the wax paper?
If you have a magnifying glass, have your child use it to observe the water drops. What do the water droplets look like? Are they big or small? What shape are the water droplets?
Put some food coloring in one of the containers of water, then have your child make more droplets with the colored water. Encourage your child to make different designs with different colored drops. Try pushing two drops together. What happens to the drops when we push them together? How do they change?
Have your child use the straw and eyedropper to move the water drops around or try tilting the tray. What happens to the water?
Ask your child to try blowing through a straw that is aimed at a water drop or water puddle. What happens then? Experiment to see how many different ways that blowing through the straw can make a big drop break into smaller drops.
Science