This is a line from a Baum Family favorite, Back to the Future. Marty’s young dad is attempting to woo his future wife, Lorraine. He means “destiny”, making this a malapropism — also humorous but not as much.
Density was our destiny this week in preschool. Density, the measure of how tightly-packed the atoms of a substance are, is a difficult concept for middle-schoolers, let alone preschoolers. But our punkins already know about floating and sinking, don’t they? Yep. Now they know that corn syrup floats atop honey because it is less dense than honey, and that Oma’s Density Tower is quite good-looking.
During construction, our Density Tower revealed a surprise or two. Substituting molasses for maple syrup, Oma and Co. discovered that molasses is not only highly viscous (see how it sticks to the side of the cylinder?), it is more dense than corn syrup, and thus those two traded places almost immediately.
Whole milk came next, and then liquid dish soap. Density is fascinating. Truly.
Miss Nomi, a.k.a. the one who draws rainbows on everything, noted the distinct layers: dish soap (green), tap water (yellow-orange), avocado oil (clearly hidden in the back of the cupboard to come in handy today), and Isopropyl alcohol (red). Not quite ROY G. BIV, and yet — distinct.
Continuing on, we made boats. A careful look will show one fashioned into a skiff, while the others styled more as “baked potato wrapper”. Nevertheless all floated, as boats should when launched into a very blue ocean. Archimedes would tell us that boats float because the water they displace is more dense than their cargo. Miss Em proved him correct.
A careful look at the two boats, below, will reveal that one has sunk to the bottom of our ocean because its cargo of pennies, beads and bottle caps finally out-densed the volume of water they replaced. The other boat?
Well, what’s the fun of keeping your boat afloat if your cousin has just sunk hers?
None, I tell you. All boats, potato-wrapper, dingy or skiff, met their destiny at the bottom of the ocean this day because — density.