Week 6 - Absorbency and Developing new materials. 

Absorbency is the ability of a material to soak up liquid. This is a very important property of some materials which are useful to us. For example paper towels, nappies, bath towels and sponges. The video below explains what makes a material good at absorbing liquids. Please watch it.

So now you know that porous materials absorb water because they contain tiny holes which soak up the water. If you would like to, you could design your own experiment to compare the absorbency of different materials. Please ask permission from an adult at home first. Perhaps you could try to test the absorbency of some different materials by putting them in the same volume of water one at a time and measuring how much water they soak up. 

Developing new materials:

Over the last 40 years, many new synthetic materials have been developed. There is a whole area of science called Material Science. Some of these new materials have been very useful to us. Spencer Silver developed the glue which is used on Post-It notes completely by accident. He worked for a company called 3M, which has a site in Loughborough. 

Here is the story of Spencer Silver's discovery. Please watch the video below.

Your task if you are working from home: In your own words, retell the story of how Spencer SIlver invented the Postit Note, then take a photo of it and send it to me in an individual chat in Teams for feedback. Thank you.

If you are interested in other new materials which have been developed synthetically then watch the programme called Everyday Miracles- How foam was accidentally discovered. You can find this on the drop down menu at the side of this page. Or Click here!

Homework  Please complete the questions on the sheet below.