Clay itself sinks, but clay boats float. Why? Young engineers build clay boats to learn about buoyancy. They test the weight the boats can hold using washers and then tweak their designs to make improvements, following the engineering...

Second graders explore floating and sinking and make predictions about whether certain objects are likely to sink or float. They read the story Who Sank the Boat? by Pamela Allen. Pupils loacate rhyming words and discuss the events of...

Clay's as good a material as any to build a boat, right? An introductory lesson sets the stage for two activities associated with buoyancy. The first involves building boats out of clay, while the second uses these boats to measure the...

Eureka! Using the clay boats made in the previous lesson, learners investigate the idea of buoyancy and water displacement to finish the last installment of five in a Floaters and Sinkers unit. Their observations during the activity...

Present the class with a question on whether the water level of a pond will rise they take a large rock out of a boat and drop it into the pond. Groups come down on all sides of the question and try to justify their answers. The activity...

Whatever floats your boat. Young engineers learn about density by measuring the masses and volumes of boxes filled with different materials. Using their knowledge of densities, they hypothesize whether objects with given densities will...

First graders drop items into water, and discuss why some things float and others sink.

Swimmers know to float by turning their bodies horizontally rather than vertically, but why does that make a difference? In an interesting lesson plan, scholars explore buoyancy and the properties of air and water. They test cups to see...

Students perform experiments to see if items will sink or float. In this sink or float lesson, students work in groups to make predictions, and record the results. After the experiments are complete students make a book of the results.

Save the soup! Scholars devise a flotation device using straws, balloons, foam, corks, and other objects. A can of soup must stay afloat for at least a minute with this device—your dinner might depend on it!

Fifth graders define density as the amount of mass per volume a material contains, compare the densities of several types of materials, especially those that sink in water compared to those that float. They use two different methods to...

First graders examine the water cycle through readings and experiments. In groups, they conduct interviews with others and use the information to create a chart displaying the various uses of water. After brainstorming lists of ways to...

Learners discover how seeds travel from their parent plants in search of water, sunlight, and nutrients, and conduct experiments in which they note characteristics that encourage seed dispersal by means of wind, water, animal carriers,...