Experiences

Ice cube

A.D

Romania

High Secondary School

Science

Teaching in class

Indirect

Most kids want to succeed; they just need help figuring out what they need to do in order to get there. One way to motivate your students is to get them to take a hard look at themselves and determine their own strengths and weaknesses. Students are often much more motivated by creating these kinds of critiques of themselves than by having a teacher do it for them, as it makes them feel in charge of creating their own objectives and goals.
At first thought you might think that an ice cube sitting at the very top of a glass would eventually melt and spill over the sides but is this what really happens? Experiment and find out!
You need a glass, warm water and an ice cube. Ask students to fill the glass to the top with warm water. Then lower in the ice cube, making sure you don’t bump the table or spill any water over the edge of the glass. Ask them to watch the water level carefully as the ice cube melts. Even though the ice cube melted the water doesn’t overflow. When water freezes to make ice it expands and takes up more space than it does as liquid water (that’s why water pipes sometimes burst during cold winters). The water from the ice takes up less space than the ice itself. When the ice cube melts, the level of the water stays about the same.