Help! Quicksand!!!

We did some great work today exploring states of matter . We looked at Oobleck, a mixture of starch and water that's actually kind of tough to classify. It looks and feels like a liquid until you push or pull on it with great force.

Then we learned about quicksand, another mixture that behaves in the same strange way. Although these days, quicksand is not high on our list of worries, neither was a pandemic 2 months ago... Should someone fall into some quicksand, we wanted to know what's the best way to get them out: yanking them quickly or with slow movements.

Finally the kids thought of ways to improve the experiment and new lines of research.

• Try different temperatures (Nachshon)
• Can Oobleck stop a bullet? Can you swim through it? (Ella and Tzofia)
• Use hot water and cold water and see which one will make the spoon sink faster. (Hillel, Lavi, and Eliana )
• How does it happen? (Yoni)