Wednesday 9 February 2011

Mars experiment

This week we are studying Mars and I found this great experiment to explain the red color of the soil of Mars. The kids and I read the book Mars by Steven Kip.
At the end of the book he had a great experiment to make Martian sand and to explain why Mars is the color red. We decided to give it a try.

First fill a basin with sand.











Next take steel wool and cut into very small pieces and place in sand. Our scissors were not very sharp so we didn't get the pieces as small as we would have liked, but it still worked. I recommend wearing rubber gloves for this:)



Add water to cover and then let it sit and watch the results






After 3 days the sand is turning red due to the the rust forming on the steel wool. You can still see large chucks of steel wool but it is starting to rust and turn the sand red/orange in color. In this picture there is still water to evaporate.







After 10 days, most of the steel wool is gone and all of the water has evaporated. We now have Martian sand!:)






I explained to the children the the dust on Mars is red because of iron oxide which is rust. Basically we made rust sand:)!

14 comments:

  1. Oooooh! these are the experiments I like...quick, easy and you didn't have to spend a lot of time finding all the materials! This looks like fun and I bet everyone enjoyed watching the color changes! Thanks for sharing! I will be adding this experiment and your previous moon one to my planetarium post soon for my own reference and to share with others. Have a good Wed. and clicked a vote for you ! :)

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  2. Great experiment. Thanks for sharing all your fun. This is turning out to be a wonderful unit study. I voted for you. Have a great day.

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  3. Hi Tracy,
    Thanks for adding to your post!. I am really enjoying Steven Kipp's books, unfortunately our library doesn't have the whole series so I am on my own for the rest of the planets. I like simple and easy science experiments my kids don't have the patience to wait to long for results to happen:)

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  4. Thanks Homeschool review for commenting have a great day

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  5. HI Lynda,
    Yes we are enjoying it so far and the kids are still interested after 4 weeks which is a great sign:)

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  6. Way too cool! You always have great experiments! Hopping over from NOBH! Enjoy your day my blog friend!

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  7. Aww Thanks Melissa for the nice comment:) I hope I can find something exciting for the gas planets, they are next:).

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  8. I voted for you today. I hope you are having a wonderful weekend! =)

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  9. Interesting, would be great for a child who really loves space!

    Coming thru from science sunday.

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  10. That is super cool! Thanks for sharing, and thanks for following my blog, Mama In The Middle. I've posted my link on your blog hop and I'm following you here.

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  11. Cool. My son loves Mars now, so we will have to try this. Thanks.

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  12. Wow, I will definitely need to bookmark your site for future reference when we do Astronomy in 2nd grade! What inspiration! I am now a follower of your blog. =)

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