Making solutions in science - Year 5

As part of our new science unit Year 5 have been investigating how materials can change when put together. We were exploring our original thoughts that some materials seem to 'disappear' when placed into water. 

We put some salt into water and we noticed that we couldn't see it anymore. We knew from our life experiences that if we tasted the water it would taste salty so it wasn't that the salt had disappeared. This intruduced us to the scientific term 'dissolving'. We learned that when a substance such as salt or sugar is mixed into water it dissolves and creates a solution. 

We decided to test this further with an experiment. The scientific question we posed was 'Does the temperature of the water change how quickly a substance dissolves in water?'

The children used their enquiry skill of observation and stirred salt into water that was cold, warm and hot and then recored their results. 

' The hot water dissolved the salt the quickest.' - Janae 

'It took longer for the salt to dissolved in the cold water but it did still make a solution.' - Mia 

This week, we are going to see if we can reverse this action and separate substances from a solution. Watch this space!