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Does Water Have Feelings? {Science Experiment}

Well, it may not have feelings, but it responds when you talk to it.  If you have been following my blog at all, you will know that in the fall we did an experiment with rice jars.  We said, “I love you” to one, and “I hate you to another”.  Then we let one jar just sit as our control group.  If you want to read more about the rice jar experiment, go here.

After that experiment, it made kids become curious about what would happen if we repeated the same experiment, but with different items such as fruit or water.  Well, we did repeat the experiment with water and repeated another experiment with blueberries.  This post will be about what happened with the water experiment if you want to repeat it in your classroom or at home for that matter.

First we took three jars of exactly the same size and put the same amount of spring water in each one.  I used spring water because I have a water cooler in my room. Then we put exactly 1 cup of water in each jar. We made a jar to say “I love you” to, a jar to say “I hate you” to, and a jar with no label that was just to sit as our control group.  The kids in the classroom talked to the jars every day for 30 school days before they left the room.  The jars just sat over the weekend, and they just sat if we had a day out of school.  The students picked the jars up when they talked to them, but for the most part didn’t really pick up the control group jar.

Below, I put these against black construction paper so you could really tell the difference in the three.

Ironically, our 30 days ended on Valentine’s Day, so we opened the jars on February 14th.  The control group jar just smelled like water and the water was very clear.  The love jar didn’t have a really detectable smell to me but one of the kids said it smelled like cut grass.  It was a little whiter in color than the control group water, but not very much.  The love jar looked very similar to the control group.  Next the big difference was in the hate jar.  We could easily see that the hate jar had a cloudy white color to it compared to the other jars.  It also smelled musty when we smelled it.  More condensation was also on the sides of the jar.  Upon close examination, we also noticed that the lid had grown mold or mildew on the top.

Below, in order the control group jar lid, the love jar lid, and the hate jar lid.

Ok, so I know the experiment isn’t perfect because the lids aren’t all the same, but I couldn’t find another one of the metal lids at the time, so I used the purple plastic one.

What a fantastic and powerful way to teach kids about bullying and kindness.  The power of the kids’ words is evident when they speak to the jars without you having to say much.  I do suggest you ask questions when the jars are opened such as:

Why do you think this happened?

How is this like when we talk to people?

Do you think your words affect people the same way?  Why?

What do you wonder now?

Did our words really change the water?  Was it just some bacteria that floated in the air?  Were the jars clean enough? Was there bacteria in the water?  What could explain these differences?  (I feel like I am a script writer for Ripley’s believe it or not.)

Now, this happened not once–but twice.  First, with the rice experiment and now with water!  Something is definitely going on here.  You don’t believe me?  I dare you to try it at home for 30 days.

What will we do next?  Well, the kids in my class decided that they wanted to put three NEW jars in boxes in separate corners of the room to talk to each day–so that is what we will do!

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