Paper Towel Experiments for Kids
- In this experiment, children will be able to see how air pressure can keep water at bay. First, take a glass or plastic cup and press a paper towel down inside. Then fill up a bucket, bowl or sink with enough water to entirely submerge the cup. Hold the cup perfectly upside down over the water, and lower it down into the water, being careful to keep it perfectly upside down. Then, still being careful to keep it upside down, take the cup out again. Have the child pull the paper towel out. The paper towel will be completely dry because the air pressure prevented the water from getting into the cup. Put the paper towel into the bottom of the cup again. Lower the cup into the water. This time, instead of keeping it perfectly upside down, turn it until you see bubbles escaping. Lift the cup back out and allow the child to take the paper towel out again. This time, the paper towel will be full of water because the air was no longer trapped inside the cup (it got out when the cup tilted), so the water could get in.
- For this experiment, you need two glasses, one filled with water and the other empty. Have your child take a few paper towels and twist them so that they create a thin strand. Then have the child place the ends of the strands into the two glasses, so that one end is in the empty glass and one in the full glass. In a short amount of time, the paper towel will start transferring water from the full glass to the empty one. It will end once both glasses have half the total water in them. Explain to the child that this is because of capillary action, the same force which allows water to get from the roots of plants to the leaves.
- The purpose of this experiment is to allow the child to observe different seeds' growth. According to Kidzone, the best kinds of seeds to use in this experiment are "corn, bean and radish." To begin this experiment, you'll use paper towels to make an ideal environment for seed growth. Using something sharp, such as the tip of a Phillips head screw driver, make three tiny holes in the middle of the paper towel, with equal distances between them. Dampen the paper towel, and put the bean seed over one hole, the radish seed over another and the corn seed over the third. Fold the paper towel in half (making sure the seeds stay secure) and put enough staples on the sides to secure the paper towel together. Put the paper towel into a plastic sandwich bag, leaving the sandwich bag open. Put the sandwich bag in a secure area where the child can observe it daily. Monitor the seeds daily, adding more water if the paper towel dries out. Encourage the child to make observations on the growth progress of the different seeds.
- In this experiment, your child will be able to guess and determine which brand or type of paper towel absorbs the most water. You'll need several different brands of paper towels, and can either buy several rolls or ask friends with different brands for a small sample of theirs. For this experiment, you can be almost as precise or informal as you like. If you want to make the experiment even more accurate, you can use things like graduated cylinders and beakers. However, you can also perform it with items available around the home. Fill a glass with a precise amount of water. You can use a measuring cup to measure and control the amount of water in the glass. Put a folded paper towel into the water for a set amount of time, and then remove it. Experiment-Resources.com recommends leaving the paper towel in the glass for 20 seconds before you take it out. After you take out the paper towel, measure how much water is left in the glass. You may want to write this number down. Do the same thing, using the same amount of water each time, for each different brand of paper towel. Once you've repeated the experiment as many times as you like, see which brand, on average, left the least amount of water in the glass. This is the most absorbent brand.