Hard And Strong Materials

We finally got back into our science project and spent some time testing materials for hardness and strength. First we discussed what these words meant and that some materials could be strong and soft at the same time, or hard and fragile. We decided to test how hard materials were by scratching them with our nails and then with a knife. The children put the materials in order from softest to hardest.

We tested strength by trying to crush materials down or by dropping them to see if they smashed. We touched briefly on the fact that shape can also determine strength and we will do an experiment to explore this soon.