Which Material Is Best?

In Science, we have been learning about materials. Over the past few weeks, we have been beginning to understand different the properties that materials have. We know that some materials, such as glass, are transparent but fragile. Others, like metal, are rigid and dull. We can use materials for lots of different things, but we have to consider their use and which properties would be best.

Today, we were investigating which material would be best to make a hat. We started by looking at, and feeling, the materials that we were choosing from. We had tissue paper, cardboard, tinfoil, foam, sponge, fabric and a wax-cotton. After we had looked at the materials, we made some predictions about which of them would be the best and why. We spoke about the wax-cotton that we had been very kindly given by Nancy. She uses these materials to make a range of bags, so we thought about why they could potentially be waterproof. Some of us used this understanding and included it in our predictions!

We spoke about fair tests and why these are important. We know that we complete fair tests to ensure that our results are accurate and consistent. We discussed how we could do this within our experiment and decided that we should use the same amount of water and pour the water from the same height, at the same speed. We recorded our results in a simple table, were we wrote down what we noticed during the experiment.

We found that tinfoil was waterproof, however, we thought it might not be strong enough or soft enough to be turned into a hat, so we don’t think we’ll be seeing any tinfoil hats on the shelves anytime soon! We spoke about combining different materials, like the soft aspect of fabric or cotton, with the waterproof nature of plastic. We found that the wax-cotton option was therefore the best, as it suited all of our needs.

Thank you so much to the parents that brought in materials for us to use! We had a great time, and really appreciate all of your help.