Sinking and Surfacing Submarines

This afternoon, Year 4 began to ponder just how on earth a submarine works…

We began our scientific quest by learning about Mr. Cornelius Drebbel, an inventor of the very first submarine in the early 1600s. It was fascinating learning about what materials he had available to use in order to make his submarine…

The children then had to create a model, demonstrating how a submarine works using a bendy straw and reusable Blu-Tak. They dropped the model (weighted end first) into a bottle of water and screwed the lid on tightly. By squeezing the bottle to make the ‘submarine’ sink, it taught children about buoyancy and density. When the children stopped squeezing causing the air pressure to make the submarine surface.

Some children even went one step further and began to change some of the variables to see whether the submarine will still sink and surface. Here are a few new scientific experiments some of the children carried out.

-Does it still work with the weighted end at the top

-Will it still work if you held the bottle upside-down

-Does the submarine still work if you take one of the ends of the straw out of the Blu-Tak.

A very enjoyable afternoon making scientific discoveries. Well done, Year 4.

Mr. P