We recently tried exploring viscosity of fluids using water, oil, golden syrup and honey. The main problem we had was that for some of the liquids the marble dropped too fast for us to time. With this in mind we decided to try the same experiment with different strength jellies.
I made three different jelly mixtures in test tubes.
Solution A – Normal Jelly
Solution B – Normal Jelly diluted with half water
Solution C- Solution B diluted with half water again.
I would recommend amending those dilutions a little. We found that even after 5 minutes the marble hadn’t made it half way through Solution A and it dropped though B and C too fast.
Can you draw a table to display your results? and make predictions before starting?
If you try this at home and improve on our method, do let me know!
Other Viscosity Investigation Ideas
Have a Viscosity Race, using different liquids down a board
Try the same race but large scale in the garden!
Try timing a marble dropping through different liquids.
Test Tubes kindly provided by Learning Resources.
We’d love you join our Science Sparks community on G+ and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
If you take any videos or photos of you and your children doing any of our activities please share on G+ and tag us using #ScienceSparks. I’d love to see and share them around.
Last Updated on January 26, 2014 by Emma Vanstone
Leave a Reply