The Fun Things Water Can Do!

Have you ever thought about water and just what it can do? We did! So we did a series of tests to put water through. Our main question: What can water do?

Well, water has many different properties. In this post, we are observing three of them...
-Surface Tension
-Cohesion
-Adhesion

Let's get started!


     First, we started out by putting droplets of water on penny faces (just to see how many drops could hold on it!). I personally felt that the face of the penny would hold more. So dear Mr. Abe Lincon (on my 2007 penny), we found, could hold 47 drops of water on his face! After this, curiosity grew and we decided we would test the difference between water and alcohol. We discovered that Abe could only hold 27 drops of alcohol on his happy copper face! So this must mean that water is more flexible than alcohol. It must be thicker than alcohol because it bubbled over the penny (as shown below).

      So, what property of water was being evaluated by this experiment? Well, it was pretty fun, but there was indeed a point to this experiment! This experiment was performed to make evidence of water's denseness more presentable, and easier to see...

     Now, why is there a "bubble" over the penny? Did anyone else notice that and ask questions, too? Well, this is a perfect example of both Surface Tension and Adhesion. Surface Tension is when the water takes a form of tension on the surface (pretty self explanatory), and Adhesion is when water sticks to other surfaces. The reason that the water appeared to be a bubble over Mr. Lincon's face was because it was sticking to the surface of the copper penny. The alcohol just ran over the edge because it isn't as wonderful as water in this way and doesn't have such a great Adhesion. So no bubbles for alcohol!

Here's what the penny looks like with the water on it!

     Why did you get the results that you observed? I could see that the water was more dense than the alcohol because it seemed to "bubble" over the penny and hold on to the edges of the top tighter before it finally ran off the edges.

     Regarding living organisms, how might this property of water be important? It's been said that the body is about 70% water. This means that we've got some pretty good, thick material inside of us! We need this to keep ourselves going and padded (even though we've got organs like skin to keep us protected). It's very important to have lots of water in you! You're made of it!

After this, we got thinking about the many possibilities. We could do more experiments! And that's just what we did!

     Our next experiment was pretty neat, too! A small piece of wax paper (which has proven to be PRETTY stretchy! It's amazing. Check it out sometime.) was cut and one small drop of water was placed on it. Happy drop of water! Next we tok a toothpick to the poor little drop of water and tried to cut it in half. But the funny thing we discovered was that it would not split in half!

     What property of water is being evaluated with this experiment? Many properties were being evaluated here. Flexibility and strength were definitely a part because the water was able to snap back together so easily, and go into any shape that we pushed. The water had a certain inability to split but it so thick. So one would think they could split it. But separating water is a very difficult task, we found!
     Shortened words! This experiment is observing the property of Cohesion, where water sticks to itself. The confused rambling in the previous paragraph? That's what it all sums up to. Cohesion!

     Would it matter if you placed the droplet of water on  notebook paper, as opposed to wax paper? Why? It certainly does matter! Ever notice how you paper absorbs the water and gets all soppy? That's why this is different! When water is on wax paper, it stays in the form of a drop (just sitting on something!). But when it's on paper, it seeps down into it and you can't cut it without splitting the paper. So it definitely does make a difference. Cohesion wouldn't apply here because the surface of paper isn't like wax paper, allowing the water to form into Adhesion, which would make it stick to the paper. NOT good!

AND FINALLY! We decided we'd see if we could make water travel (NO, not carrying a cup of it! WAY cooler than that!). We did so by filling up one beaker with water, leaving an empty water at the end of a string, and running the water down into the beaker. It was really neat! The water really can slide down the string, if one is careful enough not to let it slip away. And finally, it all makes it into the once-empty beaker at the other end! Very fun time!


So a few things to remember:
-Surface Tension
-Cohesion (sticking to itself)
-Adhesion (sticking to other surfaces)



And because you MUST see another GREAT picture of an adorable kitty cat...