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Donemana Primary School, Donemana, Co Tyrone

P3/4 discover it's good to have fat!

5th Mar 2015
P3/4 discover it\'s good to have fat!

As part of our ongoing FROZEN topic P3/4 have been learning about polar bears.  We learned that polar bears spend a lot of time swimming in the freezing Arctic waters and we began to wonder why they don't get cold.  We discovered that under their fur, polar bears have 10 cm of fat so we decided to test out if it's this fat that keeps them warm.

Rebecca's name was choosen from the peg box so she became our willing volunteer.  First we poured lots of cold water with ice cubes into a basin -Andrea and Stevie confirmed that it really was freezing!! Next we covered Rebecca's hand in lots and lots of lard (fat)  Rebecca put both her hands in the water and discovered that yes, the hand covered in lard was much warmer than the hand without lard. So fat really does keep you warmer!  During our follow up activities everyone had the opportunity to try the experiment - we all agreed that a bit of extra fat can be very useful!