Hello, scientists.

My name is Mr. Wilshire, and in this lesson, we're going to be looking at absorbent materials.

Let's get straight into the lesson.

The outcome for the lesson today is to investigate which materials are absorbent, and explain how suitable they are for different uses.

There are some key words to look through before we start our lesson.

I'm going to say them and I'd like you to repeat them after me.

Ready? Material.

Very good.

Suitable.

Excellent.

Property.

Well done.

Absorbent.

Brilliant.

And the last one here, investigate.

Excellent job.

Well done.

Don't worry too much if you're not too sure what some of these words mean.

As we go through the lesson, the meaning will become a bit more obvious to you.

If you'd like to, you can pause the video now and have a quick think about what they are, and if you know some of them already.

Restart when you're ready.

The first part of this lesson is called absorbent materials.

Let's go and absorb some information.

Now, different objects are made of different materials.

Why do you think that is? Pause the video, have a quick think.

Restart when you are ready.

Hmm, so why are different objects made of different materials? Is it because some objects might need to be stronger than others? Is it because some objects might need to be eaten? Hmm, I don't know.

I can see here there's a picture of some plastic buckets and spades, and there's a sieve that's made out of metal.

Now, I know that the plastic buckets and spades there are quite strong, but also quite flexible as well.

It means that they're really light as well, so you can lift them up and you can put sand in them and make a brilliant sandcastle.

The sieve there is made out of metal, which is usually quite hard, but there's also lots of holes in that sieve as well.

That allows the water to drain through.

Hmm, so both of these objects have been made for a specific reason.

What material is a cereal box usually made from? And why do you think it's made from that particular material? Pause the video and think again.

Why is a cereal box made from that material? Hopefully you've had a good think about why a cereal box is made from that material.

Well, a cereal box is made from cardboard.

Cardboard is strong and rigid, so it can be folded and made into a box.

I wonder why it's important that it must be cardboard though.

Would it be useful to have a metal box? Hmm, that doesn't sound very cheap.

Metal is the type of material you need to mine out of the ground.

The properties of materials make them suitable or unsuitable for particular uses.

Alex here says, "Suitable means that a material is right for a particular use." These cushions, for example, are made from cotton fabric, so why is this a suitable material for a cushion? Pause and have a think.

Restart when you've done that.

Cushions are made from cotton fabric because they need to be nice and soft, otherwise they wouldn't be very comfortable to sit on.

It wouldn't be good to sleep on a wooden pillow, would it? Hmm.

Stop and think.

When we make an object, we use the material that is most strong, suitable or unsuitable? Pause the video here, have a quick discussion, and restart when you've done that.

The answer here is suitable.

The material needs to be suitable for its use, or otherwise it's going to be useless, isn't it? What are these objects used for? And what property do these materials need to have to do their jobs? There's a sponge, some towels and some kitchen roll.

Why do we need to use these different things anywhere in our home? Have a quick discussion and restart when you've done that.

Hmm.

All of these materials here will soak up liquids like water.

Of course, you can use the sponge when washing up.

There's a rough side on the top edge there, and the sponge bit will soak up lots of water to enable you to wash things up and wipe it down.

The towel will allow you to dry things, and you can use a towel lots of times before it gets too soaked up with water.

The kitchen roll there is very useful for little spills in the kitchen, or anywhere else in the house.

You can use kitchen roll to soak up some of the water and some of the liquid.

That means that you have to throw the kitchen roll away when it's been used, but it's a very useful thing to have, and it means that you don't make the towel dirty.

These materials soak up liquids like water.

Do you know what we call this property? Well, these materials are all absorbent.

That means that they soak up liquids like water.

Stop and think.

Which of these is a property of materials? Is it absorbent, wood or cotton fabric? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and restart when you've done that.

The answer here is absorbent.

Wood and cotton fabric are both different materials, aren't they? A property of materials will suggest whether it can absorb things or not absorb things.

The word absorbent means to soak up liquid, like water.

What can a material do if it is absorbent? Does it not let any light through? Can it be moulded into different shapes? Or does it soak up liquids? Pause the video, have a think, and restart when you're ready.

The answer here is to soak up liquids.

If it's absorbent, it can soak up liquids a little bit like water.

So why do you think that being absorbent can be a useful property? Hmm.

Have a quick discussion here.

Why is it useful to absorb things? Restart when you've done that.

Well, it could be really useful when we want to absorb or soak up liquids, such as after a bath or a shower, or if you're cleaning up spills.

Remember I said earlier that the kitchen roll was useful to clean up a spill, because then you won't get the towel dirty, but you do have to throw it away afterwards.

We can use absorbent materials to make some objects that will soak up liquids, just like a sponge or a flannel.

Here you can see a sponge being used to wash a car.

There's also a sponge here to clean a sink.

And you can use a flannel to dry your hands afterwards.

You can then hang the flannel up or the towel that you've used and it will dry out.

Stop and think.

Which of these objects should be made from an absorbent material? Is it a book, a sponge, or a table? The answer here is a sponge.

It wouldn't be good to have a table absorb your things, and a water soaked book would also not be very fun to read, would it? So here's the first task in your lesson.

Part one is to think, which of these objects need to be made from an absorbent material? Is it a bath mat, a ruler, a towel, an umbrella, a computer, or a sponge? Is there more than one item that needs to be made out of absorbent materials? And why? Have a discussion about what you think, and restart when you've done that.

Well, you could have organised some of your results a little bit like this.

You can see a bathmat, a towel, and a sponge are all made from absorbent materials, whereas the items that are not made from absorbent materials is a ruler, the computer and the umbrella.

Part two is to go on an absorbent material hunt around your classroom or your home.

Which objects can you find that are made out of absorbent materials? Why do you think that these objects need to be made with an absorbent material? Why is it useful? Hmm.

Go on your hunt and then come back and restart the video when you've done that.

You might have found some items a bit like this.

You could have found some different things as well though.

Sam says, "These objects need to be made of an absorbent material, so that they can clean up liquid spills or sneezes, and to clean or to dry things that are wet." There's a mop, a kitchen roll, a tea towel, some tissues and a cloth.

Of course, they all need to be helpful if you're cleaning things up, usually.

Let's absorb ourselves in the next part of this lesson, testing absorbent materials.

Now, Sofia and Lucas want to find out which materials are absorbent.

They found some materials to test, and when scientists test materials, they can record results in a table.

There's Lucas and Sofia there, and they've got their table.

We saw a table being used earlier in the previous task.

I wonder if we can use it in the same way this time.

On the left hand side there is the material and it says, "Tracing paper, aluminium foil, cotton wool, and hard plastic." And the other side said, "Absorbent or not?" Hmm.

Have a quick think here.

Do you think that some of these materials are absorbent or not? Have a quick discussion and restart the video when you are ready.

Well, hopefully you've had a chance to think about the different materials and if they're absorbent or not.

These will be your predictions, won't they? Lucas and Sofia talk about different ways in which that they're going to investigate materials and find out if they're absorbent.

Lucas says, "Materials that are absorbent soak up water.

If we drip water over each material, we can observe if they soak up the water." Sofia says, "We could pour a cup of water into a small tray and put a material into the tray.

Then we can take it out and squeeze it to see how much water has been absorbed." They're both really good ideas.

Do you have any other ideas to investigate which materials are absorbent? Have a quick think.

Restart the video when you've done that.

Hopefully you've come up with a few good ideas as to some investigations you could do yourself.

Maybe you're gonna throw a bucket over something.

Hmm.

Who knows? Well, Sofia and Lucas start to plan their investigation, so they collect the things that they need.

There's a jug of water, a plastic tray, some tracing paper, some hard plastic, some cotton wool, and a plastic sponge, and paper kitchen roll and aluminium foil.

Hmm, there's lots of different things there.

They're all made out of different materials, aren't they? So Lucas and Sofia then investigate by pouring some water into a tray, and then putting a material into the water.

They leave it in the water for one minute, then they take it out and squeeze it over an empty tray.

They observe how much water comes out.

It's really important that they make sure that it is all for one minute, or otherwise those materials will be in at different times, and the results might be different.

Here you can see they're soaking each material in water and then squeezing it.

The water drops then squeeze out, and they go into the empty tray, and that catches the water.

Hmm, I wonder what they're going to measure here.

Sofia and Lucas record their results in the table.

There's the material on the left hand side and it says, "Can I squeeze water out of it?" The tracing paper is a no.

The cotton wool says yes, there's a lot.

Paper kitchen roll and a plastic sponge is also a lot.

Hard plastic and aluminium foil is a no.

You can't squeeze water out of those things.

So then they started to fill in the right hand side of their table here.

You can see there that the tracing paper was not absorbent.

The cotton wool, the kitchen roll, and the plastic sponge, even though there was a lot or a bit, they all were absorbent.

The hard plastic and aluminium foil were also not absorbent.

Lucas says, "To investigate which material is most absorbent, we need to measure how much water we can squeeze out of it." Sofia then says, "Yeah, we can squeeze the water into a measuring beaker and measure exactly how many millilitres come out of each material." There, you can see the diagram from earlier, squeezing water into a measuring beaker.

And then looking at the little dots and lines to see how much is there.

That's what they're going to measure.

Hmm.

Let's see what these children have to say about it.

Aisha says, "We can hold different materials up to the light and find out which ones are absorbent." Hmm, that's a good idea.

Maybe if you can see through the item because of the light, you can tell if it's absorbent.

Alex says, "We can feel the materials to find out which ones are absorbent too." And Izzy says, "We can drip water onto different materials to find out which ones are absorbent." Who do you agree with here? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and restart when you've done that.

I wonder, who do you agree with? Well, Izzy here is correct because she is having a think about how we can mix the water with the material, whereas the other two are just looking at how the material is before you even get to put water on it.

Absorbent materials soak up water, so we can test materials to see if they're absorbent by dripping water over them.

So here's your final task for this lesson.

Which material will be most suitable for mopping up a spilled drink? Now, you need to test some different materials here to see whether or not they are absorbent.

You can see a picture of a spilled drink there.

There's a fair amount, isn't there? Here are some materials that you can test.

And Sofia says, "Will you test the materials in the same way as we did, or maybe you thought of a different way?" Hmm, you need to test some cling film, some aluminium foil, paper kitchen roll, newspaper, a plastic sponge, plastic bag, and a cotton wool.

Well, get investigating.

If you've decided on doing it a different way, maybe you can draw a diagram so we can see exactly how you've decided to do it.

Don't forget to label your diagram as you go.

Well, best of luck with this task.

Restart the video when you've done that.

So, which material will be most suitable for mopping up a spilled drink? Hmm, your results might be a little similar to these.

You might have had it slightly different.

A sponge or paper kitchen roll are the most suitable materials for mopping up a spilled drink.

This is because the most amount of water was squeezed out of them.

Ah, yes, whereas the cling film, the aluminium foil and the plastic bag, well, they didn't absorb any water at all, did they? The water was able to just run off of them.

So thinking about all our results and everything we've found out, let's summarise our lesson.

Being absorbent can be a property of some materials.

If a material is absorbent, it soaks up something, often liquid, like water.

Some materials are absorbent, and this makes them suitable for certain uses.

There is a picture of an absorbent sponge being used for the washing up.

Well, I hope that you've had a good think about absorbent materials and how this might help you in the future.

Maybe if something is spilled in the future, you know that you don't need to go and get a plastic toy to go and mop it up.

You might need something absorbent, like a towel or some kitchen roll, and you can impress people nearby by saying, "I know, I need to get something absorbent." Well done scientists.

I've been Mr. Wilshire.

Thank you very much for listening.