In this lesson, the students will learn about freezing, melting, and evaporation. The students will use the mixture of sugar and colored water. The students will observe the changes that occur as ice cubes made from sugar and green colored water is frozen, melted and evaporated. The students will record the changes that occur as the sugar and water transforms into a solid, a liquid and a gas. The freezing stage will occur overnight. The melting stage will occur within a day. However, it is the evaporation stage that will take up to a week's time. The students should monitor the sugar water mixture every other day to observe its changes.
Before I placed the mixture into the freezer, the sugar sat at the bottom of the container and the water above. The first time I tried this experiment, I let it sit out overnight covered and then I put the mixture into the freezer. When I took it out of the freezer the next morning there was no defined layer of sugar, it seemed as if it mixed. As I let them sit there uncovered there still was no defined layer and white crystal-like shapes began to form on the top. Over more time it became moldy and fuzzy. I tried the experiment a second time, this time mixing the sugar and water and then placing it directly into the freezer. The next morning when I took it out, I noticed a layer of sugar at the bottom. The layer of sugar remained as it melted and began to evaporate. Left over several days, mold begins to form again. Due to this mold issue, I decided put the mixture into ice cube trays and found success.
Create a mixture of water, do not use blue dye, and sugar in ice cube trays and observe what happens as the water evaporates and what becomes of the sugar. I put two teaspoons of sugar and colored water in each cube of the ice cube tray. When it is taken out of the freezer there will be a separation between the sugar and water.
As they melt, they will become a mixture again, with a layer of sugar on the bottom. This will allow the students to see how a liquid freezes and changes into something different. Then we will observe as that solid changes back into liquid form. The evaporation process will take about a week for all the water to evaporate. After evaporation occurs the sugar granules will remain. The sugar will be a deeper color from what the water started out as. The sugar will form a hexagon matrix on the bottom of the plastic container, resembling stained glass. This will allow the students to observe how one mixture freezes, melts and evaporates.