Here is the video for the investigation on viscosity and volcano type:Investigation 20.1
This video is longer than most – it clocks in at around 16 minutes. But I think it is worth viewing, and will connect you to the activity in a way that most did not experience. I ran through all of the types of liquids we were testing, but in class, each table group only tested two of the liquids, and at the end, we shared our results and filled out our tables. In this video, you will be able to view the liquids flowing down the wax paper, take your own observational notes, and record times that I tracked in the video.
Make sure to stick around for the end of the video, when I tie the investigation to the reading that we did on Volcano Types (pages 229-231). In the followup session, we compared our results and our conclusions about the viscosity to the types of volcanoes that these liquids might form (if they were lava).
Remember, viscosity is a characteristic of liquids. It is the tendency of a liquid to resist flow. I have said in class that it helps to replace the word viscosity with the word thickness to help determine its meaning within a sentence, but it is important to mention that they are not the same thing. They may often be directly related, but we must be careful to remember that viscosity does not mean thickness. This activity may help you with this concept!
