by Katerina Tiapula

The prep time is a bit longer for this one. You’ll need to prepare the balloons in advance and have a list of questions ready so that you can guide the kids along when they need a little help. Since it takes time to freeze the balloons, you can have good conversations about interesting things to find out.  Here are some examples: 

• Does a ball of ice float or sink?
• Does it melt uniformly so that it becomes a smaller ball, or will the top melt faster?
• The bubbles inside the ice, are they hollow?
• How do you think they got there?
• When you put salt on the ice, it will make a dimple, melting a hole in the ball. How far does it go or does it stop at some point?
• Will a drop of food colouring colour the ball or just drip right off the side?
• Will the ball of ice break into pieces or just in half if dropped onto the ground?

This is an exercise in inquiry. Think of as many questions as possible. Write them down and guess what the result will be. Children frequently think of fantastic questions that adults don’t because we aren’t use to asking so much. Listen to all the possible questions and think about the answers.

Does the plastic balloon pop if the water inside is frozen?

What you need:

• Balloons
• Water
• A freezer with a space for the balloons
• Salt
• Sugar
• Food colouring
• Measuring instruments
• Paper to take notes

What to do:

1. Fill up some balloons with water (we used 6 balloons).
2. You can blow air into 1 after the water is inside for some variety.
3. Put them in the freezer.
4. Once completely solid, take them out and have a look at what is there.

Our results:

We were shocked at how beautiful the bubbles were. The formations in the ice were stunning and we looked at that for quite awhile before getting started. The answers we got may sway your experiments so I won’t include them now, but our favourite was the salt. We put a few drops of food colouring into the salt so that we could watch it inside the ice.  The other big hit was the results of dropping the ice on the floor. The shatter patterns were different with ice that was straight from the freezer and that of the ones that had already started melting. I think the kids just like breaking the ice though.