Science Class: Clothing Optional

I take a lot of pictures. I mean A LOT. In fact, I take so many pictures that I forget that I have even taken them until months and months later. These photos were shot last year with my husband's camera. The only reason I found them was because I dug my husband's camera out to go to the beach. When I was loading my photos in to the computer I ran across this little science project.

Some background.

I took these photos before I began blogging. If I had been blogging I would have made sure that my daughter was dressed before snapping the shots. As it is, I tried to edit out to the best of my abilities, but yes we are doing naked science.

She was mad because I wouldn't fill the sink all the way up to the top before she got in. I told her that if I filled it all the way, when she sat down the water would over flow.

Birdy went through a naked phase. She just didn't want to wear clothes at all. This was when bug was just a baby. She was jealous because bug got to take a bath in the sink and she had to sit in the bath tub. I tried to tell her that she was too big for the sink, but she wanted to try and squeeze in. I thought if I let her climb in to the sink she would see how uncomfortable it was and would change her mind. Instead we decided to do science. That is just what kind of ADD house we have going on here.

These old photos are proof to me that learning can happen anywhere and at any time.

And now on to the lesson.

 Birdy wanted to know why the water in the sink looked so empty before she sat down in the sink, and why it looked so full after she sat down in the sink. And so began our lesson about water displacement. I gave Birdy a glass of water and a dry erase marker. I let her draw a line around the glass to mark where the water was.

 Next, I gave her ice cubes. Birdy added the ice cubes one by one to the water and watched it rise above the blue line that she had marked. I told her that the cubes filled up the space that had been filled with water. The water needed somewhere to go, so it rose up.

We did the experiment one more time, filling the water all the way up to the top of the glass. Then we dumped in our ice cubes. The water over flowed the glass and spilled all over the counter.

"And that is what would happen," I said, "If you filled the sink to the top and then got in"