Muffin Man's school has a science fair every year, and it's mandatory for 4th and 5th graders to participate.
Last year, his question was "which do gerbils like better, sunflower seeds or corn?" (answer: sunflower seeds).
This year his question was "How fast does ice melt on different surfaces?"
Mr. Spock and he worked together to do the set up, which involved a camera doing time-lapse photography. Here's Muffin Man's description of the materials needed:
8 ice cubes, 1 wooden cutting board, 1 brick/rock, 1 cast iron griddle, 1 glass casserole, 16 pipe cleaneres, 1 tripod, 1 lamp, 1 timer, and two cameras.
And here's his description of the variables:
The surfaces must be the same temp. so I put all the surfaces in the same place for about 20 hours, the ice must be the same temp. so I did them all at the same time to ensure that the air temp. will always be the same, and the ice cubes must be the same size.
I won't tell you which melted first, but I will tell you that the first ice melted at 18 minutes, 19 seconds. The last ice melted at 3 HOURS, 7 minutes, and 33 seconds.
The time-lapse video is a little over 3 minutes long, and the first 20 seconds are really cool. Muffin Man brought it in as part of his presentation.
We were a little concerned that maybe we'd helped him a bit too much with this one, until we saw the other kids' projects at the fair. It was pretty obvious that we were actually quite hands-off, comparatively.
