You might think butterflies’ brightly coloured wings make them stand out to other animals, but the colours are often a defence mechanism to deter predators! The coloured leaves of butterflies are an adaptation that has evolved over millions of years. Why are butterflies brightly coloured? A warning Bright colours act as a warning to other…
Hooke’s law states that the amount of force applied to an elastic object is proportional to how far it stretches. However, if the object is overstretched it will not spring back. Hooke’s Law only applies if an elastic object is not overstretched. Objects are made from lots of molecules with bonds between them, if too…
Sublimation is when a solid becomes a gas without turning into a liquid first. There are three states of matter. Adding or removing energy from a substance can change the state it is in. For example water is a solid below 0oC ( freezing point ), a liquid above 0oC ( melting point ) and…
Moonbows ( lunar rainbows ) form in the same way as rainbows, but the light source is the moon rather than directly from the sun. The moon is lit mostly by light from the sun, but also by light from other stars and light reflected from Earth. Rainbows and moonbows form when light is refracted…
Where does rain come from? Most rain comes from the sea! Water on land, in lakes and seawater evaporates when it’s heated by the sun to form a gas called water vapour. Water vapour rises and cools back into water droplets forming clouds. When the droplets of water are big enough they fall as rain…
Chemistry is the study of matter. Matter is basically anything that occupies space and has mass! We use chemistry everyday and everywhere. When you bake a cake the ingredients are chosen, measured and then cooked so they react together to create something tasty (or not, depending on how you combine ingredients and cook them )….
Batteries are used to power toys, torches and other items that need energy to work. Batteries store energy as chemical energy which is converted into electrical energy when the battery is part of a circuit. When a battery is placed inside a circuit it pushes charge around the circuit. This pushing force is called voltage….
Voltage is the force that pushes current around a circuit. Imagine a battery being like a pump, pushing the current around the circuit. A more complicated way of defining it is that voltage is the difference in electrical energy between two points on a circuit. You can buy batteries with different voltages or use multiple…
An element is a substance that cannot be broken down into another substance. Each element is made up of its own type of atom! The periodic table lists elements in order of atomic number and is laid out so elements with similar chemical properties form columns ( groups ). Atomic number is the number of…
Everything is made of atoms. Atoms are really, really small and are actually made up of even smaller particles called electrons, protons and neutrons. Atoms are not all the same. They have different numbers of electrons, protons and neutrons. Each different kind of atom makes up an element. An atom consists of a positively charged…
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