Line upon Line Learning

Homeschooling and lifelong education . . . one day at a time

Enjoy life-long learning. . . one day at a time.

Hands-on learning activities, ideas, games, and printables for parents, homeschoolers, and educators

  • About
  • Read the Blog
    • Preschool Learning
    • Elementary Learning
    • Homeschooling
    • Parenting and Family
  • Become a VIP
  • Shop
  • 0 items
Home » Elementary Learning » Archimedes Water Displacement Science Lesson

Archimedes Water Displacement Science Lesson

Post by Rebecca Reid 3 Comments

Read about Archimedes and then create your own Eureka moment with a water displacement science in the kitchen lab to find the volume of rocks or another odd-shaped object.

We’ve learned how to find the volume of a cubical object (such as my son’s bedroom). But how does one find the volume of something as odd-shaped as a rock? Using Archimedes’ story as an example, we made our own kitchen Archimedes water displacement science experiment to understand the concepts and reach our own “Eureka” moment.

Archimedes and Water Displacement Stories

As I hope is evident by my interest in providing my kids with engaging picture book lessons, I love it when reading time intersects with simple learning lessons, activities, crafts, and so forth. Learning about the Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes was a perfect segue into a kitchen table science lesson.

Archimedes and the Golden Crown, an audiobook story written and narrated by Jim Weiss, is a retelling of the traditional story of Archimedes determining how to figure out the volume of an awkwardly shaped object. Although there is no direct proof of the story of Archimedes running through the streets naked yelling, “Eureka!”, Jim Weiss’ master storytelling abilities give the concept of water displacement a memorable context. He treats the story as true, and the tale of golden crowns, lying jewlers, and a naked mathematician make it funny for the kids to listen to. If you are not familiar, the story goes that

Mr. Archimedes’ Bath by Pam Allen does not even try to be factual, but that is okay because the silly man taking a bath with his kangaroo, goat, wombat, etc., is amusing enough. In this story, Archimedes wonders why the tub keeps overflowing. He finally comes to the conclusion that he and all the animals have displaced the water from the full tube, and therefore.

What Floats in a Moat? by Lynne Berry and Matthew Cordell features a goat named Archie (after Archimedes). In his silly scientific experiment, he is trying to see what will float in a moat, with three iteratios: a barrel of buttermilk (full), an empty barrel, and a barrel half full of buttermilk (because his trusty sidekick could not drink it all). Of course, it is the half-full barrel that provides enough ballast to balance in the water just fine, thus teaching why boats needs to have some weight in order to be seaworthy. It was alesson that was lost on my littlest one, but prompted more discussions (and ideas for more experiments) for my older one!

Water Displacement Science Lab for the Kitchen Table

If you are not familar with the traditional “Golden Crown” story, I’ll summarize it as so: Archimedes needed a way to show the king that the golden crown he was given was actually not solid gold. Since he knew that silver weighed less than gold, it would take more silver to bring the golden crown to the proper weight. Archimedes struggled to think of a way to determine the proper volume, and eventually came to realization while he was in the bath (supposedly).

We did not have a way to measure quite such a large volume of an item. And I certainly did not have seven pounds of gold. So we obviously adjusted the scale of our lab to fit in our kitchen. I found the perfect tool for measuring right in our kitchen cupboard: my small liquid measuring glasses.

Do you use small liquid measuring cups? I received one of these for Christmas a few years ago, and I’m surprised how often I use such a small volume liquid measure. Measuring oil, medicine (for the kids), bits of water for recipes. Because these cups provide Tablespoons, ounces, and milileter measuring lines, I feel I have plenty of choices.

Anyway, for this task, my small liquid measuring cups were perfect because they had enough lines to show small increments of change.

In the story about Archimedes, he filled his bowl to the top and then measured the spillover for both the crown and the 7 pounds of gold. We found that measuring the spillover was much harder than simply measuring the before and after of the two rocks. We supposed that Archimedes did not have equal glass beakers with which to measure the change, so we decided to document the difference in water level once the rocks were added to the glass beakers.

So, first we put 100ml of water into the glass beakers.

When we were sure they were equal, we added the rocks. We could then compare what the new levels of the water were. Raisin was surprised that the left rock (the brown one) was just over 120ml while the other was at 135ml. We had thought the brown one looked larger.

Now we know! What a fun, but simple, way to make an historical story come to life!

Did you like this post? Pin it for later!

We used small liquid measures from our kitchen to measure the volume of two different rocks using Archimedes' water displacement201703 archimedes water displacement science ideas.

Storybook Science in the Kitchen

For the next month, my fellow bloggers will be sharing storybook science ideas! This week, we’re focusing on “In the Kitchen” science. Click the image below to see the other posts.

Click over to Rock Your Homeschool for more ideas on how to make science fun!

If you like this post, you may also like...

Teaching science to your elementary aged kids using these clever baking activities. So much fun to do science in your own kitchen and eat your results!How to Teach Science through Baking Activities We read about Archimedes and the problems he had. Then we tried his same solution. I love approaching science with a literature-rich curriculum!Learning Science History through Literature-Rich Curriculum Rain Water Cycle Activity Kitchen Table Science: Sink or Float? Balancing like The Cat in the Hat: A Mini-Lesson on the Center of Gravity

Filed Under: Elementary Learning Tagged With: kitchen table science, picture book lessons, Science, STEM, storybook science, water

Comments

  1. Trisha @ Inspiration Laboratories says

    March 1, 2017 at 10:40 am

    I love the story connection to the science lesson!

    Reply
  2. Marivic P. Gatudan says

    July 26, 2019 at 2:55 am

    I like the story it helps a lot in my science subject.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Filter Shop by Keyword

Line upon Line Learning’s Products

Our digital learning products are available at these sites:

The Line upon Line Learning Shop

TeachersPayTeachers 

Boom Learning

(What is Boom?)

Are you considering homeschooling?

The Yes, You CAN Homeschool: Debunking the Nay-sayers digital course will help you overcome some of your worries!

I’m a Contributer!

Big Book of Homeschool Ideas Vol 2

The Big Book of Homeschool Ideas vol 2
ebook
| Hard copy (Amazon)

Learn with Play

Learn with Play ebook

Get the eBook 

Advertisement


Note: I include advertisements on my site. See my disclosure policy for more details.

 

Advertisement

Copyright © 2021 · Line upon Line Learning · Privacy and Disclosure Policy · Log in