Satori Smiles

In a previous science lesson, we learned that Matter Takes Up Space and Matter Has Weight.  Today we learned that Matter has one more thing in common: Matter Is Made Of Particles. We learned hands-on how solids, liquids and gases are made of particles – tiny microscopic parts we cannot see. This lesson was fun and messy, good thing we did it outside!

After crumbling/disassembling a few solids, we used this water sprayer to demonstrate that liquid is also made of particles.

The fine water droplets felt great.

By blowing into a straw in soapy water, we were able to witness air separating as well.

The second concept we went over was how matter differed, check out this site on how States of Matter differ. We used Play-doh rolled up into small balls (our particles) to demonstrate for ourselves. Gas particles moved freely and quickly, with no apparent attraction to each other. Liquid particles moved around and slid over and under each other and were much closer than the gas particles. And finally, solids clung to each other, and jiggled a little, but for the most part, stuck together. We ended up with our Play-doh being solid clumps smushed together.

We did a few more demonstrations on how the particles of different states of matter behaved. Blowing flour into the air and watching it fly up into the sky was fun! This simulated gas particles.

Mom enjoyed trying to capture our “gas” particles floating and drifting away. I asked her if she blew marbles out of her hand, would they float up in the air.

Of course we covered how temperature affects how fast particles move and drawing conclusions from our prior demonstrations, we know that a solid ice cube, if warmed up, will have its particles move faster around each other until they are liquid. I set a small bowl with an ice cube in the sun and it melted as we did our activities.

We concluded with a fun game. Satori got it immediately, with no help from me. I told her to pretend we both were particles. Then I said Be a Solid! She ran to me and hugged me tightly. I was thrilled that she understood the lesson so quickly.

Liquid! We moved around each other, making sure we touched, but always on the move. Gas! We bounced off the deck railings and each other. Solid! (Hug tightly.) It’s getting hotter… (moving around each other as liquid)… Even hotter… (bouncing off each other as we evaporated into a gas…

We ended up with a deck floor full of flour, sugar (the ants will love that), water, soap, clay, and play-doh! The picture below was taken before we got all wet, then caked with flour!

Last summer we had the pleasure to host a guest from South Africa for the weekend. Every morning he made himself fried bananas! We never tried them… until today. Our SOTW Ancient Africa activities included a lot of recipes to try, and since we’re vegetarians, we decided to go with an easy one.

This was our first time eating a plantain. It looked a little overripe, but it worked out fine.

They were more challenging to peel than a normal banana, so I cut it in three pieces and went from there. Then I sliced them into 1/4″ slices. We don’t fry things much, so all I had to fry them in was coconut butter. About a minute on each side.

I also wanted to make the Mango Rice, but I forgot to pick up mangoes. So we just had the Fried Plantains with white rice. And this was our dinner tonight! (A typical dinner for us lately is brown rice and some sort of bean, so this wasn’t that unusual.)

They were delicious!!