Science Experiments : Disolving sugar at different heat levels

~Medha is 26 months old~

Learn about solutions as you add more and more sugar cubes to different temperature water. This easy experiment shows that you can only dissolve a certain amount and that this changes as the water gets hotter.

What you'll need:

• Sugar
• Cold water in a clear glass 
• Hot water in a clear glass (be careful with the hot water) 
• Spoon for stirring 

Instructions:

• Make sure the glasses have an equal amount of water. 
• Put a sugar cube into the cold water and stir with the spoon by counting from 1 - 10 numbers. 
• Write down which glass has less amount of sugar. 
• Repeat the same process by counting from 1-10 again and now check which glass has less sugar? 

What's happening?

The cold water isn't able to dissolve as much sugar as the hot water, but why? Another name for the liquids inside the cups is a 'solution', when this solution can no longer dissolve sugar it becomes a 'saturated solution', this means that sugar starts forming on the bottom of the cup.

The reason the hot water dissolves more is because it has faster moving molecules which are spread further apart than the molecules in the cold water. With bigger gaps between the molecules in the hot water, more sugar molecules can fit in between.

Medha enjoyed doing this experiment and we did this experiment only once few months back when she was 2 years 2 months old. Even today if I ask for reason, she replies as " Speed moving molecules". She says that water has molecules and hot water has speedy ones and cold water has slow moving molecules like tortoise ( as that walks slowly :P)

You can try the same for very young kids, toddlers too and make sure you explain them hot water can dissolve the things faster than quickly. You can get into more details about molecules etc mentioned above once they grow older. 

Watch the video to see how we did the experiment at home. Non-telugu friends, please excuse me for using Telugu in the video.