Materials Needed:
- Cornstarch
- Water
- Green sprinkles or food coloring
Directions:
- Put ½ cup of cornstarch and ½ cup of water in a bowl.
- Mix together the two materials with a spoon or your hand for extra sensory play!
- add more cornstarch or water to get desired consistency.
- Add in your green coloring, sprinkles or other add-ins.
- Explore! Hold it in your hand, try to mold it into a ball, slap it while it's in a bowl.
How to Expand it
- What happens when you tap the mixture with force? Do you get any oobleck on you? What happens when you try to pick up the oobleck and hold it?
- What happens when you add different textures to the non-newtonian fluid?
- What happens if you use cookie cutters with oobleck? Will the shape hold? Is there a way you can make the shape stay the same as the cookie cutter?
- For a larger scale experiment, make a bucket of oobleck and try to stand in it! Will you sink if you stand still? What happens when you jump?
What do kids learn?
- They learn opposite words like gooey and solid, warm and cold, big and small, empty and full.
- They touch, squeeze, smell and feel, helping build connections in the brain.
- They see chemical reactions in action, teaching cause and effect.
- They practice using the small muscles in their hands (fine motor skills) later used for writing.
- They measure ingredients, demonstrating volume and encouraging comparisons.
- They experiment! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn.
- Science vocabulary
- Non-Newtonian Fluid: Something that acts like both a liquid and a solid. This is a material that does not follow Newton’s Law of Viscosity, it does not maintain the same fluidity regardless of force.
- Force: energy caused by a push or a pull, in this case, the push or pull given to the oobleck by your hand or a tool.
1 Comment