Does Snow Sink or Float | Winter Science for Kids

Welcome back for another STEM Science Saturday! Winter is in full swing around here. Just the other day it was -15 degrees and snow was everywhere. That meant 2 things. First, the kids wanted to play in the snow. Second, it was freezing outside. Since we couldn’t spend too much time outdoors, it was the perfect time for some winter science for kids. The boys were fascinated in the way the snow worked and wanted to know “does snow sink or float”?

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Simple Winter Science for Kids

Setting up the Experiment

Materials:

Snow

2 Bowls

2 Jars of Water (warm and cold)

Food Coloring

Stopwatch (optional)

Set Up:

Fill both jars with the same amount of water, using cold water in one and warm in the other.

Use a few drops of food coloring to color each bowl of snow.
(We used blue to for the snow we were going to put in the cold water and red for the warm water jar.)

Conducting the Experiment

The boys were really curious what was going to happen when they put the snow on water. As always, we discussed our predictions. Bones (7) thought that the snow would float for a little bit and then sink. He used his prior knowledge to recollect the time he saw the snow on the lake. Legoman, was pretty sure it was going to sink immediately.

For the first round, we tried doing the experiment at the exact same time.

Did you see that? It happened so fast, but if you look closely, you can see that the snow in the cold water immediately sinks and then bounces back to the surface of the water. Then as it melts, you can see it dispersing into the rest of the water.

The hot water and the snow mixed almost immediately, as the snow was more dense than the hot water.

After doing the experiment together, we decided to try again to see if we could observe the change closer.

We did this with both the cold and warm water jars.

Making Observations and Noticing

This picture shows a pretty clear picture of the snow and the water mixing as the snow melts and becomes a solution of two liquids mixed together. This demonstration is great at debunking the misconception that the snow disappears. The boys were able to describe to me how instead the snow changes form and mixes with the water.

Since we have done experiments with different liquids before, the boys were really interested in what would happen if we put the snow in a bowl of oil. You will have to wait until later to see what that looked like!

Do you have a favorite Winter Science Experiment? I would love to know! Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram or subscribe by email. I can’t wait to hear your ideas.

TIME FOR STEM SATURDAY BLOG HOP!

Every Saturday we will get so many wonderful ideas linked up from around the web that we have decided we want to feature some of these great ideas. That’s why every Saturday, I will pick from the posts linked up and feature my absolute favorites. This might be a hard choice to make, luckily you can always head over to last week’s post and check out more great science resources!