What is Surface Tension?  44 Flares Twitter 4 Facebook 14 Pin It
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surface tension  What makes water molecules stick together to
form a drop of water?  Surface Tension.  What allows those cool
water bugs to walk on water?  Surface Tension.  But what is
surface tension and how to you teach it to children?   Well, I
wouldn’t get more than 10 words of that definition spoken before
my children’s eyes would glaze over.  So I decided to forget the
formal definitions and instead do a hands-on demonstration!  To
demonstrate surface tension, we used a penny and found a squirt
bottle that we could easily control the rate of water droplets. 
An medicine dropper or pipette would be ideal.  We filled the
top of the penny with water drops….then we added more drops….and
more drops.  water drops on penny  As my children worked on
adding drops of water to their pennies, I explained to them what
surface tension is.  The water molecules hold on tightly to each
other.  T