Egg In The Bottle Experiment

So how does it works? The answer is all about air pressure. If you set the egg above the bottle, the air pressure inside the bottle matched the air pressure outside, so nothing happened. But if you drop a burning match inside the bottle, it caused the air inside to heat up and expand rapidly. The expanding air pushed the egg inside and escape from the bottle, that’s why the egg vibrating. When the fire consumed all the oxygen inside the bottle, the flame went out and the remaining air in the bottle cooled down.

Posted by Al-Ruqaiyah

Guest Blogger

How To Make Eco-Enzymes Out of Garbage?

Shared by Asma Azmi

Guest Blogger

Reshuffling Molecules

Ever broken an egg before? Notice the soft, transparent, slimy part? This is called the albumen, which contains a lot of proteins; in fact, it has over 10 different kinds of proteins that are very beneficial to our bodies. But what happens when you heat egg in a pan? 

The molecules of proteins can be arranged in different forms. The arrangements of these molecules are determined by the type of bonds that hold them up together. Imagine weaving or bonding pieces of thread into cloth. And then, this piece of cloth can be turned into a shirt with more stitching or bonding. 

What happens when you heat up the egg white is that some bonds are broken, and the molecules are rearranged. This new structure is more stable than the raw egg white. 

The same thing also happens when you heat up butter. Butter is in solid form because of bonds that hold them close together. But these bonds are broken when given heat and the molecules rearrange themselves in the form of oil, which is a liquid form. When you introduce hydrogen molecules into peanut oil, the molecules of the oil will be rearranged, and you get peanut butter! 

Water in its solid form is called ice. The molecules are packed tightly together and are held by many bonds. These bonds, however, will be broken by heat and the water molecules start to become loose. The ice will eventually lose its shape and turn into a liquid form.

When you heat up lemon juice, it will turn brown because the molecules are rearranged with oxygen molecules. This is the explanation for the experiment below. 

       
  
               

Experiment: To make invisible ink

Materials: 
lemons, cotton buds or paintbrush, white paper, electric iron, ironing board.

Steps:
1.    Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice out into a container.
2.    Dip the cotton bud or paintbrush into the lemon juice and use it to write your name on a piece of clean white paper. Repeat this 3 times.
3.    Allow the paper to dry.
4.    Once dried, iron over the paper until you see your name appear in brown. 

Glossary of Terms:
Albumen [al-byoo-muhn] the white of an egg.
Bond [bond] something that binds, fastens, confines, or holds together.
Molecule [mol-uh-kyool] the smallest unit of an element or compound.

                     

Shared by Surain A. Victor

Guest Blogger

The Little Engine in Us

Did you know that the heart of a blue whale is about 450 kilograms? That’s the weight of an average dairy cow!!

The heart is a bag-like structure in the chest region made completely of muscles. These muscles contract and relax from the time you were just a fetus in your mother’s uterus. 

The heart is made up of four chambers each with its own blood vessel. In these blood vessels are valves that make sure that blood flows in the right direction. The opening and closing of these valves are what gives the ‘lub-dub’ sound of your heartbeat. 

The heart pumps thousands of liters of blood through your body every day. First, it sends blood without any oxygen to the lungs to get oxygen. It then pumps the blood containing oxygen around all the other parts of the body. After delivering its oxygen, the blood returns to the heart to start the process of getting oxygen all over again.

During exercise, more oxygen and nutrients are needed by the muscles so blood must be delivered faster than when the body is resting. To meet these demands, the heartbeat increases. 

Generally, stethoscopes are used to listen to the heart, lungs, and intestinal tract but can also be used to listen to blood flow through vessels. The stethoscope is a very important tool used by medical professionals and health care workers to listen to your heartbeat.

If you want your heart to be healthy for the rest of your life, get plenty of exercise, follow a good diet and keep your heart clean and drug-free.

Experiment: Make your own stethoscope

Materials: 
60cm-long rubber hose, plastic funnel and masking tape.

Steps:
1.    Insert the nozzle of the plastic funnel into the opening of one end of the 60cm-long rubber hose. 

2.    Wrap the neck of the plastic funnel where it joins the rubber hose with masking tape to ensure it is airtight.
3.    Place the mouth of the plastic funnel on your chest and place the opening end of the rubber hose to your ear.
4.    Listen closely to your heartbeat.


Glossary of terms:

Muscle [muhs-uhl] tissues in the body that produce movement
Uterus [yoo-ter-uhs] the organ in a woman’s body where a fetus develops
Blood vessel [bluhd ves-uhl] tubes that circulate blood throughout the body
Valve [valv] a structure that allows fluid to flow in one direction only
Oxygen [ok-si-juhn] a colorless, odorless gas in the atmosphere that is used in respiration

Shared by Surain A. Victor

Guest Blogger

Showers of Blessing

That feeling after drinking a glass of ice cold water on a hot day doesn’t just hit the spot but it also keeps you alive and allows your body to function regularly. With 70% of our body is made up of water, ensuring that one is hydrated all the time is important, especially in hot and humid countries. This fact is further emphasized by how a man can survive three weeks without food but only three days without water.

Much like us, plants need water to survive as well. But who gives them a drink? How do plants and crops which can grow in an area as big as twenty football fields acquire water without really moving? The answer to that is that it comes to them. 

When the sun warms up the waters from the lowliest puddles by the roadsides to the massive rivers, lakes, and oceans; it turns the water; which is in liquid form, into water vapor that rises into the air. That water vapour then forms clouds, which contain small drops of water or ice crystals. The clouds are formed way up in the sky which can stretch be as high as three thousand meters (which is the distance between KLCC and KL Tower) up to eighteen thousand meters.


As clouds rise higher and higher, the air gets colder and colder. This causes the water vapor to condense into liquid form. When the water in the cloud becomes too heavy, gravity causes it to fall back to the ground as rain or snow. This entire process is known as precipitation. Rain is important to keep our farmlands, jungles, and flora healthy and It also cleans the air of dust and keeps the air cool.

Experiment: 
See how precipitation forms.

Materials: 
funnel, plastic bag, glass jar or container, hot and cold water, ice cubes.

Steps: 
1. Pour one cup of hot water into the jar or container.
2. Place the funnel in the jar or container and make sure the contact point between the rim of the jar and the funnel is airtight. You can use tape or Plasticine for this.
3. Put the plastic bag into the funnel.
4. Pour the cold water into the plastic bag and add the ice cubes.

5. Observe what is happening in the jar.

Fact: 
The world’s water cycle is never ending. It travels on a journey from the sky to the land or sea and travels back up to the clouds again!

Glossary of terms:

Hydrate [hahy-dreyt] anything that is chemically combined with water

Crops [krop] products from the ground that is consumed by humans

Vapour [vey-per] gas that is suspended in the air

Liquid [lik-wid] molecules that move freely but are not separated

Precipitation [pri-sip-i-tey-shuhn] the process of water vapor condensing into liquid form and falling to Earth

Flora [flohr-uh] plant

Shared by Surain A. Victor

Guest Blogger

Calling for Guest Bloggers!

We would love to feature more guest bloggers on the Petrosains blog. If you have interesting stories on science or related topics which you came across in Petrosains or anywhere else; we welcome you to write for the Petrosains blog! Remember, the articles must be originals.

Submit your article TODAY & every submission will receive an exclusive #BlogLife T-shirt from Petrosains. 

Hurry! Send it to ayuroyani@petronas.com.my with your blog post in *.doc format and your photograph!

Feel free to contact ayuroyani@petronas.com.my for more details. 


Visit Petrosains blog at www.creating-wonder.blogspot.com!  

Posted by Ayu Royani

Petrosains Blogger 

You Could Break A Glass Bottle Without Dropping It. But How?

What do you need?
To do this experiment, you will need a glass bottle, some string, a container of ice water and a pair of scissors. 

What to do?

First, cut a length of string and soak it in acetone (acetone is used as fuel). Then tie the string around the glass bottle. Using a lighter, burn the string. Keep turning the glass bottle that's on fire until the fire goes off. And then, quickly put the glass bottle into a pail of ice water.

What happens?
The glass bottle breaks into half after immersing it in ice water. This is because of an effect called 'thermal downshock'. Thermal downshock is the term given to cracking that results from rapid temperature change. This can also be observed when a hot glass is exposed to ice water — it will crack or break.

Watch the video above! In the experiment, a high temperature (hot) is created around the burned string and a rapid temperature change or shock occurs especially at that location when it is soaked in ice water (cold). The shock is the result of a drastic thermal gradient, which refers to the fact that temperature change causes expansion of the molecular structure of an object in different amounts.

This differential expansion can also be understood in terms of tension. At some point, this tension overcomes the strength of the material. As a result, a glass bottle will break into half!





Posted by Ayu
Petrosains

Designing an Experiment Using The Scientific Method

In an ideal world, all learning sessions will have perfect participants with all the necessary prior knowledge and are quick to grasp what's going on. However, real life is never that easy and one of the important challenges to address in facilitating any learning session is to be mindful of the audience. Whenever I facilitate such a session I always keep in mind that I have to tailor the knowledge and style of communication according to my audience background. I will like to share an example of how I approach this at a recent session I facilitated with colleagues who are from a largely non-science background, in which we wanted to explore designing an experiment using the scientific method.

The very first thing to do before conducting an experiment is to set a goal. However, I prefer the interactive way where the audience has to set their own goal.  So what I did in the session was to display a plant (in a bottle) on the table. I then asked a question, ‘What do plants need in order to survive?’. One of the answers given was sunlight so I then followed up by asking the participants that if the survival of a plant is dependent on sunlight, the quantity and quality of sunlight received by the plant can be a variable for an investigation.

Before that, what are variables? Basically, there are 3 types of variables which are controlling variables (what we never change), manipulative variables (what we change), and responding variables (what changes after the experiment).

The controlled variable is what changes when everything else is kept constant. Using the plant-sunlight example, among the constants will be the type of plant, amount of water, type of soil, same-sized bottles and the temperature of the room. The manipulated variable will be the location to place the plant as we are controlling the quantity and quality of sunlight received. I can for example, place one plant in a dark room while allowing another to be fully exposed to sunlight. After a determined period, you will soon discover that the plant that is kept in the dark will die, and given how both plants are given equal treatment in all other cases, I can conclude that sunlight is essential for a plant to survive. 

The five steps in the scientific method are:
1. Setting the goal of an experiment.
2. Making a hypothesis, predicting the outcome to the goal of the experiment.
3. Doing the experiment.
4. Recording the result and making observations from the experiment.
5. Making a conclusion.
 

The objective of my session is to challenge my colleagues to conduct their own experiment using the scientific method. The goal for them is to investigate factors affecting the rate of reaction.  The materials are hot water, cold tap water, film canisters, paper cups, clear plastic containers and an effervescent tablet (which produces gas when water is introduced). I used an open-ended approach because I would like them to come up with their own hypotheses and decide their own goals for their experiment.

 

The audience were divided into 2 groups; group A and Group B. 

Group A made two hypotheses on temperature and surface area to test the rate of reaction. For temperature, they tried different temperatures of water for the same tablet and for surface area, they crushed one tablet into powdery form and using the other in its original form. From their experiment, it showed that the effervescent tablet in hot water reacts faster compared to the one in cold tap water and powder form reacts faster compared to the one in the original form. 

Group B made another hypothesis on the amount of tablets. They filled up two containers with water, and in each inserted a different sized tablet (whole and half). The container with the whole tablet had visibly more gas produced than the one with the half tablet, as observed within a set time frame.

Basically, no matter who does the experiment, if they follow the scientific method, they can actually do it, make conclusions and learn something. So, for this sharing session I finally wrapped up with the fact that besides knowing factors affecting the rate of reaction, learners also were introduced to asking questions, variables, hypothesis, observation and drawing conclusions.

Posted by Ayu
Learning Specialist, Petrosains