How is Temperature controlled in Spacecraft?

For today's chemistry experiment the children used polystyrene to investigate how good it is at shielding materials from outside heat.

Great photography skills there by the Mama ... ;)

They took some polystyrene and cut a whole in it big enough to take an ice cube. They also cut a piece to work as a lid to close the ice cube inside.

They then noted the time they place an ice cube inside their polystyrene pack and another in a glass nearby.

They then had to keep checking to see how long the ice cube in the open took to melt in comparison to the one in the polystyrene and recorded the details.

There was a moment of much hilarity when Scruffie decided to drink part of the melted experiment and then proceeded to lick the ice cube til we stopped him.

The girls were totally astonished to find the ice cube in the polystyrene still not fully melted the very next day. It took around 24 hours for it to melt!

We then looked into polystyrene's properties and why it is such a good insulator. Also the impact it is having on the environment.

I love that these days I can hand the girls an experiment and after discussing it with them to make sure they have things in control, I can walk away and leave them to it. I find without my assistance their records are actually more detailed and better kept. They take much more ownership of things and thankfully they do make sure that the jobs are shared between them.