Have You Ever Heard of a Flinker?

So today we finished our up our Intro to Science unit.  We've spent the past few weeks learning about what scientists do, science safetly, etc.  To conclude the unit, I wanted to conduct a fun experiment to demonstrate practices like asking questions and making observations.  Our science series suggested sink/float but .... let's be honest, they've all done a sink/float experiment by this point.  So I decided to give it a twist ... instead of looking for objects that sink or float, we created an object that flinked!  We started with a handful of materials like a string, a paperclip, pennies, nickels, and a cork (I *may* have finished off a bottle of wine for this ... c'mon, it was for the kids)  We started by placing the cork in water and just as we guessed, it floated.  We continued changing one element at a time until we were able to create an object that "flinked" (floated in the middle of the water). 

After the experiment, the kids had to go back to their seats and draw our design in their science journals.  They had to label each element in the design.  Below is the recording sheet we used.  Click on the picture if you'd like your own copy!