As part of Central Primary's Science week, Primary 1 have been doing some scientific experiments about penguins. We wanted to find out how penguins stay warm in the Antarctic - they don't wear warm coats and woolly hats like us! We found out the penguins have blubber or fat under their skin which keeps them warm in the icy cold water.
We decided to make a 'blubber glove' and test it out in cold water to find out if it kept our hand warm. We filled a bag with cooking fat (blubber) and then put our hand inside the bag. We put the blubber glove hand in icy water at the same time as our other hand - and tried to keep both hands in the water as long as we could. Most of us found that the blubber glove kept our hand warm in the cold water - so we could keep it in the water for a long time. As you can see, the hand without the blubber glove got very cold very quickly!
We also found out some other ways that penguins stay warm - they make a penguin huddle. The penguins in the middle stay warm with all the other penguins snuggling in around them. Of course the penguins take turns in the middle so that they all get the chance to stay warm. We made a Primary 1 penguin huddle in our classroom - it was very warm in the middle!
We did a penguin huddle experiment by filling 7 bottles with warm water. We measured the temperature with a thermometer. We arranged the bottles in a huddle and left them for an hour. When we measured them again, the one in the middle was the warmest - just like a real penguin huddle!
