In this experiment, we put one clear water bottle with a white balloon, and one (painted) black bottle with a black balloon out in the sun, and observed what happened to the balloons when they were out in the sunlight. The purpose of this experiment was to learn about sunlight, and help us understand how we get energy from the sun.
We started with a conversation about sunlight, and made an anchor chart about sunlight. Then, we looked at our experiment and created a question for our experiment: What will happen to the balloons in the sunlight? The students wrote down their hypotheses, and then we conducted the experiment! We found that the black balloons filled blew up, while the white balloons did not. Here are the key understandings we took away from our experiment:
- The black balloon blew up because it absorbed the sunlight, while the clear bottle (and white balloon) reflected most of the sunlight.
- Sunlight is energy in the form of heat. So when an object absorbs the light, it will get hotter. This energy moves around and is what makes the balloon blow up.
- We should wear white clothes in the summer because it reflects most of the light from the sun, keeping us cooler than if we were wearing dark clothing.