All about air

We know that air is all around us.  We are glad that we have air to help us:

Teacher had an "empty" bottle.

We thought we could blow up a balloon inside a bottle, so we tried hard.

Impossible.

We decided that this was impossible because we were trying to put more air into a bottle that was already FULL.....of air!

But, hang on...

Teacher gave us another bottle and this time it was easy to blow up the balloon.

Very strange!  We had to guess why we could blow up the balloon this time.

After a few guesses we decided that there must be holes in the bottle, which let the air out when the new air (in the balloon) filled the bottle.  Yep, we could feel the air escaping.

Next teacher gave us a bottle with cold water in it.  She emptied out the water.

We could now get the bottle to talk to us by putting our warm hands around the bottle.

This warmed the air in the bottle and because warm air takes more space than cold air, the warm air escaped making the bottle talk!

Next we tried making an air toy - getting the box to open its lid using trapped air (pneumatics).

We tried a pump but the air kept escaping (until we trapped the air in a plastic bag, which we could easily blow up using a pump or a straw).

Lastly we tried moving different objects (without touching them).

We tried blowing (with our mouths or a straw), dropping them off a ramp, stamping near them so the vibrations moved them (or not), pulling fabric from under them.

We ran a fair test by starting all the objects on the same line, using one child to blow each in turn as hard as he could, and we saw how far each one travelled.

We recorded the results,

and we ordered the objects from the one that moved furthest to the one that did not move at all.
We have learned quite a lot about air today.