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Science Fun – Dancing Sultanas

Science Fun DAncing Sultanas

What will happen if we placed sultanas into a glass of soda water?  Watch and be amazed!!!

Dancing Sultanas is a super easy and fun science experiment for kids!  It is so simple to set up and only requires basic materials.

What you will need?

Dancing Sultanas Science Experiment

You will need a glass of soda water (sparkling fizzy water), about five sultanas and food colouring is optional.

Let’s Play

Dancing Sultanas Science

We poured some soda water into a small glass bottle and dropped the sultanas into the fizzy liquid.  The colouring is optional.

Let’s Learn

Dancing Sultanas Science 2

The soda in the water creates the fizz and bubbles.  Soon the bubbles start to pick up the sultanas and carry them to the top of the glass.  As the bubbles pop at the top of the liquid, the sultanas go back to the bottom of the glass and the pattern repeats again.

Science Fun - Dancing Sultanas

We also placed some sultanas into a glass of plain tap water to see what would happen.  They just sank straight to the bottom of the glass.  My kids did noticed that there we some small bubbles on the sultanas but not enough to make them dance, float to the top of the glass.

Learning Opportunities

  • Using descriptive words to express ideas and opinions.
  • Make connections with real life experiences.
  • Promote scientific thinking – predictions, observations, comparison, reasoning, data gathering, experimentation and evaluation.
  • Cause and Effect

Find more Science Activities…..

How to make Hanging Crystals?

Ice Boats – Floating and Sinking

5 thoughts on “Science Fun – Dancing Sultanas”

  1. this is cool. my daugther will love it! we recently did a density experiment from her science book with Molasses, Coin Oil and Water. she thougt is was cool. LOL

    1. I took this into my pre-school to let the children recreate, the children were captivated by this and we will be doing this again great fun.

      Also good for children learning to swim as they can relate to the raisons going up and down in the water. I use this a lot when teaching children to swim. excellent

  2. I’ve never seen this done before , so original and so brilliant! I love it! before I clicked over from my reader I thought they were tadpoles in a jar. I was a little concerned LOL

  3. We conducted this ‘experiment’ today with the three year olds and a four year old. I wrote it up like a proper lab experiment and we formulated a hypothesis, recorded results and discussion and took photos for their parents to see later. The four year old was thrilled, he loves science and we will be doing a lot more! The three year olds were fascinated by how the sultanas continued to ‘bounce’ up and down the glass. We noticed that the sultanas in one glass eventually stayed at the top, but when we added a bit more fizzy water, they started moving again. I love how this experiment can be conducted with just a few things from the pantry. We used mineral water. After the experiment the boys had a drink of some fresh mineral water and the discussion continued around bubbles, gas and of course, big burps!

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Hi and welcome to Learning 4 Kids!

Hi and welcome to Learning 4 Kids!

My name is Janice and I am an Early Childhood Teacher in Australia.

I have a strong passion and love for teaching and creating meaningful learning experiences for my students. What I love most is watching children discover in those amazing light bulb moments. I hope Learning4kids brings you some useful ideas.

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