Where Did Ana's Sugar Go?
Ana stirs a big spoon of sugar into a jar of water. Soon the water is clear again, but it tastes sweet.
Where did the sugar go?
Page 1
Science · Grade 5 Science
Chapter 1: Matter and Its Properties
Too small to see is not the same as not there.
Ana stirs a big spoon of sugar into a jar of water. Soon the water is clear again, but it tastes sweet.
Where did the sugar go?
Make your guess to turn the page.
Still to come: 8 pages · Words to Know · What We Learned · 4 questions · Explain It in Writing · Ask and Wonder
The idea this lesson is working on — Children believe dissolved sugar has gone, or has turned into water, because seeing is their main test for "there". The story gives three other tests — the scale, taste, and drying the water off — and all three say the sugar stayed. Ask: if the sugar were gone, what would the scale have read? The particle model is the idea that makes all three results make sense at once.
The evidence for particles — Smells spread across a room, air can be squashed into a bicycle pump, and dissolved things come back when the water evaporates. All of these make sense if matter is made of tiny separated pieces. A drop of water holds roughly a thousand billion billion molecules, which is why no microscope in a classroom will ever show one.
About the numbers — The model draws a few dozen particles so a child can count them; the point is that the count is the same in both frames. Ana's 20 g of sugar in a 300 g jar of water is a realistic amount to dissolve, and a kitchen scale reading to the gram will show no change with the lid on.