With the marbling paper art, students can learn that matter is composed of very small particles, it
can be divided into many small parts and also it contains very small matters which cannot be seen by
eye.
In this activity, students were asked to fill the water into the half of the plate. “What happens if
cellulose, which is used for gluing papers, is poured to the plate contained water up to the half?” was
asked to students and wanted them to write their answers. We expected
from students to derive that
matters can be separated into small particles. Then, students wrote their own observations after mixing
cellulose with water and compared them with their predictions. Here, since students can be roughly
handled to adjusting water’s consistency needed in marbling paper art, teacher should help students to
do
it. After that, students were asked for filling thinner into some plastic cups up to one cm from bottom
to the top. Then, we asked “What happens if oil‐paint is poured to the thinner?” and wanted them to
pour various paints into the glasses containing thinners and write their
observations. With this question,
we expected from students to infer that matters are composed of many small particles. We asked
students that “What happens if paints were dropped from brush to the solution of cellulose?” and said
them to write their predictions. Then, they dropped some paints to the solution of
cellulose and drew
different figures with the brushes’ back. We wanted them to lay a paper on the figures and to wait for
answer to the question of “What kind of changes will be on the paper?” We said them to write their
opinions, to drag the paper carefully and
to observe the paper. Teacher should be a very good guide in
all processes and provide students’ predictions, observations, comparisons and inferences to be done
well. Teacher should be very careful in doing experiment, especially when he/she prepares solution of
thinner and cellulose. Students, using marbling paper art, realized that matters
can be divided into
invisible small parts by way of experiments, cross‐examined the consecutive divisibility of matters and
finally comprehended that all kinds of matter are composed of invisible small particles hard to be
divided. In addition, students gain some basic abilities owing to this activity such as observation,
classification, prediction, building up hypothesis, using experimental materials and etc.