1. The Fish Experiment Hands on Science Activity

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3. This is a great experiment, that does not require much, all you need
are:
Cellophane Fish-You can find them here:
and
Paper towels

4. Procedure:
Remove your cellophane fish from its wrapper and lay the fish in the palm of your hand.
What happens? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Put the wrapper in the palm of your teacher’s hand.
What happens?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. Now put the fish on top of the wrapper.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Now, fold a paper towel in half and then half again, so you have a quarter of a paper towel.
Then wet the paper towel, squeeze as much of the water out of the paper towel that you can.
Now lay the moistened paper towel on a flat surface (i.e., the counter or table)
What happens?
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

6. Discussion Questions:
What action caused the fish to move more? In your hand or on the paper towel?
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What do you think had the greatest effect on the movement of the fish, your heat that your body produce or the wetness of the paper towel?

7. The Science Behind the Experiment:
The movement of the fish is caused by moisture. Originally, when you started holding the fish, your had was nice and sweaty. Over time, and as you were using your hand the water disappeared (evaporation). The paper towel continued to have moisture, in the towel, as it did not evaporate during the time of the experiment. If you left the paper towel overnight, you would notice the next morning the paper towel would be dry, i.e., evaporation.
As the water is absorbed by the fish, the water is transferred into the fish holes, by a process of capillary action. The heat also causes this water from your hand to dry up, which causes it to curl.
When you leave the fish on a flat dry surface, i.e., the counter or table, it flattens out, because there is no moisture to be absorbed.