Looking Back: What Happened? For this experiment we made magic sand, none of us had ever done anything like this before, so I knew it would be an interesting but educational process. Magic sand is sand that doesn't get wet, when it touches water it's supposed to bond together and stay dry. We tested our magic sand by putting it on a spoon and dipping it in water, and it worked for the most part with only a few grains of sand falling to the bottom. Then we decided to test our magic sand with a bigger scale, so we added all of our sand into a measuring cup filled with water to see if this would work. When we did this our sand wasn't so magical and it was all soaking wet. Looking Beyond: What's the science? Before we did this lab I had no idea what magic sand was, so I was really excited to do this experiment because I have never heard of a sand that doesn't get wet. In order to do this lab we had to know the science behind it and learn what was actually going on, and why the sand doesn't get wet. After doing some research I learned that the reason why magic sand doesn't get wet is because it's coated with a hydrophobic compound, which means a compound that doesn't like water an example of this is oil. The hydrophobic compound we used was scotchgard, what that did was cause each grain of sand to cling to each other and form cylinders when exposed to water, which also reduces its surface area. Once the magic sand leaves water it is supposed to come out completely dry, just like normal sand. Looking Inward: Did you get desirable results? I think our results were okay, yes the could have definitely been better but I think it was a good learning process. When we tested small amounts of time it worked for the most part only small grains of sand separating from the dry clump, so that wasn't a complete fail. When we tested all of our sand together it did not work at all, all of the sand got wet and none of it clumped together at all, everything fell to the bottom. I think the reason why we did not get the results we had hoped for was because we did add enough scotchgard which was our hydrophobic compound. We were all being very cautious and we did want to use too much, but I think we should have used a lot more then we did. I also think not mixing the sand well enough contributed to the results we got, in order for magic sand to work you really have to coat every grain of sand which we didn't do. Looking Outward: Collaboration and Impact I worked with Savreen, Morgan, and Genevie during this lab, I had never worked with Genevie before so it was cool to work with someone new, and I had only worked with Morgan once so that was fun as well. I think we all worked very well together, we made sure to separate all of the work we needed to do evenly. All of us contributed when it came to making the proposal, and we all took turns spraying the scotchgard and mixing the sand, Looking Forward: What's Next? If I were to do this experiment again, I would make sure we add a lot of scotchgard and mix the sand up really well so we can get the best results. I would work with Savreen, Genevie, and Morgan again because it was a lot of fun doing the lab and we all had a really good time. We are all hard workers as well so there was never a time when one of us was slacking off, we were all constantly working in order to get what we needed done. I don't think there's many ways to continue this experiment, we could possibly try this again to get better results, and we could maybe try to make something else with sand. Takeaway: Summary The very first thing we did was write the proposal, once we did that and got it checked off by Andrew, we got all of the materials we needed which luckily we didn't have to go far to get. Once we had all of our safety gear on, we put sand in a container and started spraying it with scotchgard. After every few sprays we would mix the sand and spray again, once that was done let it dry, then tested it, and it was a semi success.
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December 2015
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