Year 6 have been very hands on with our class experiments as part of Science Week at Michael Faraday School. A number of experiments have been set up throughout the week. One of these involved looking at how we can separate mixtures by using sieves and a system of filtration.
This work started off with a class discussion about some of the possible outcomes and predictions that might take place. The pupils shared their knowledge about particles, and how the size of each particle could play a role as part of filtration. Existing vocabulary was reinforced. Year 6 offered up working definitions for terms such as evaporation, condense and filter.
It was then time for the practical part of our learning. An experiment was set up to try and filter some dirty river water and purify it. This process involved filtrating the water at different stages.
First a large sieve was used. We found that this was able to capture some of the big pieces of river dirt. We then filtrated the river water once again through a smaller sieve. Year 6 were able to see how the smaller particles were caught at this stage.
The final result was a cup of river water that wasn’t drinkable, but it was certainly cleaner. A suggestion was made that we could boil the water to help evaporate some of the smaller particles that remained.