Fire! Fire! We Made Fire! (A Science Activity)

It is an off day so mommy gets a few minutes extra sleep. Plus, she also get mountains of laundry to do while listening to music a.k.a. three screaming kids.

Breakfast is finished and mommy is starting to load the laundry into the washing machine...

Suddenly, there is silence in the house. The three Little Kittens disappeared!

"FIRE! FIRE! We made fire!"

Little Miss screams, running into the house. Mommy jumps from what she is doing and runs to where the Three Kittens are. "Did they just burn the house?!"

Fortunately NOT. They are experimenting on their magnifying glass.

There they are, collecting dried leaves in front of the villa. They reported having set a small leaf on fire already.

Materials Required

For this activity you will need:

1. A magnifying glass
2. Very dry leaves
3. The sun
4. Overly enthusiastic children
   
   
   Kuya and his set-up.

Procedure:

Pose the magnifying glass over the dried leaves (or leaf at this instance). Focus the beam of light on the leaf until the light becomes very small just like a dot. The smaller the beam of light, the hotter it gets. Wait for a few minutes until you see the leaf smoke and catch fire.

Why can the magnifying lens set the leaf on fire?

A convex lens bends the sunlight, so that all the sunlight hitting the lens is concentrated into one focal point. A magnifying lens is one example of a convex lens. If you position the leaf so that it is at the same distance as the focal point, there is enough energy to generate a lot of heat and burn it.

Physical or Chemical Change?

Matter is our current topic in Science including physical and chemical changes that occur in them.

Physical change happens when only the form of the substance is changed -like its size, shape, color, volume or state of matter. Chemical change on the other hand, happens when a substance is altered chemically hence producing a new substance. A chemical change is irreversible.

Burning a leaf, therefore, is an example of chemical change.

Kiddos had fun and want to do it again tomorrow! Well, at least they did not burn the house down and it was also a learning experience.

Hmmm.. I wonder what our next experiment is going to be?!