Do pumpkins sink or float?  During our Science Lab on Wednesday we decided to tackle this question and make predictions about what we thought.  Before we made our guesses we talked a little about what we thought a scientist’s job was.  Theo said “They figure stuff out and they know stuff we don’t know.”  Jason  said “Scientists create stuff”.  Vivaan added that “Scientists work very hard!”  And Ana said “Scientists can make stuff we don’t know how to make.”  We decided that scientists know a lot but we also discussed how they make guesses or “predictions” to prove their hypothesis.  Division 24 went to work making their guesses about whether or not our pumpkins would sink or float in the water table.  As we chatted, we soon discovered that we really had two predictions:

1. The big pumpkin will sink

2. The little pumpkin will float.

We used the water table to test our predictions.  Most of the class thought that the bigger pumpkin would sink and the small one would float.  Many children said that small things float so the smaller pumpkin should float too.  Pablo said “The big pumpkin will sink because it is heavy and bigger” and most of the class seemed to agree with this idea. There was a lot of excitement and surprise when we put the pumpkins in the water table! What do you think happened?  Scroll through the pictures to see what the children discovered!