GRAND RAPIDS — West Michigan Chevy Dealers presents our weather kid of the month for this cool science experiment! Water or H2O is something we see in our everyday lives but do we know how it works? We are about to use some science to make water travel across the room trying not to spill any along the way! Our experiment will help us understanding the terms cohesion and adhesion! Here's a list of what you need to get started!
- String
- Two cups
- Water
- Towel
Step 1 - cut a 2-foot-long piece of string
Step 2 – fill up one cup halfway with water
Step 3 – soak the string in water for at least 10 seconds
Step 4 – place on end of the string into the cup that’s filled with water
Step 5 – hold the cup with water up slowly guiding the string with your pointer finger to keep the string at the bottom of the rim and you turn and slowly pour it towards the empty cup
Step 6 – slowly pour the water along the string and watch what happens! *you may need the towel for some clean up as spills are expected
Check out that water movement! Water is really cool and has some unique properties to it! It has both strong cohesion and adhesion! Cohesion means the water can stick to itself and adhesion means it can stick to other things.
Water is often called H2O meaning its molecular makeup of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom. Those atoms end up having positive and negative charges causes them to stick to one another. This is why we see rain drops grouped together and why the water in this experiment can flow down the string like a stream!
So when we soak the string in the water it adheres to it and when we pour water along the string the water clings to the other water molecules attached to the string leading to cohesion! Super cool!! So many fun things we can learn with simple science!
