Monday, January 23, 2012

Snow Day Survival!!!

    
Today was out third snow day in as many weeks!  Between snow days and sick days, I'm having to come up with a lot of things to do while I'm trapped in the house with a 5 year old.  I'm a little out of practice.  These days, when she's not at school, we're either playing outside, visiting friends or at the Science Centre...we don't spend a lot of time in the house anymore!
The last day she stayed home due to weather, it we got about 20cm of snow, today it poured rain all day...weird weather!  So, we decided to make an equally weird experiment...SLIME!!


Cornstarch Slime
 
 What You'll Need
  • bowl
  • cornstarch
  • water (the amount of water required will depend on the amount of cornstarch used)
  • large spoon
  • food colouring




What to Do
  • Place the cornstarch in the bowl.
  • Use the large spoon to stir the cornstarch while adding the water a little at a time. Keep stirring and adding small amounts of water until all the cornstarch is wet.  It won't be easy to stir, you might have to use your hands...it's weird stuff!
  • Add a few drops of food colouring to the mixture.
  • Keep adding small amounts of water and stirring until a thick slime forms.
  • Pick up a handful of slime and squeeze it, it will feel hard, open your and and watch it run through your fingers!  It's messy but an easy clean up.
It is the ‘shear force’ which causes the slime to become thicker.   As soon as the shear force is removed, the slime becomes runny again.
Try mixing plain flour with water – does this behave in the same way as cornstarch slime? It is a little bit messier.




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