What's Inside?

Here's another "black box" experiment to help your students understand what it means to be a scientist. 

Insert a small object into a ball of play dough or clay.  Make sure the object is surrounded completely.  Some ideas for objects to use: small screw, nut, button, marble, coin, pencil-top eraser.

Provide students with the play dough ball and an unfolded paperclip. 

The student uses the paperclip as a probe.  He can stick the probe into the play dough ball, without wiggling it around, 10 times.  The student then draws a picture of what he thinks the object looks like and hypothesize what the object is.