Loading…
Boyle's Busy Lab: Solids, Liquids and Gases
by My Book Hub Team
An illustrated educational book for ages 9-12. Read the first pages free, then join to read it all.
What your child will learn
Names whether something is a solid, liquid, or gas.
Genre: educational
For ages 9-12
A peek inside
Theo pushed open the heavy wooden door of a busy laboratory in Oxford in the year 1661. Smoke curled from a small furnace, and glass flasks glittered on crowded benches. A tall man with careful hands looked up and smiled. His name was Robert Boyle, a famous natural philosopher who studied the hidden nature of everyday things. Theo, a curious ten-year-old with messy brown hair and a simple tunic, had come to learn. Boyle waved him closer. Today we will name whether something is a solid, a liquid, or a gas, Boyle said. Everything around us belongs to one of these three states of matter. Theo's eyes widened. He was ready to discover how scientists decide.
Boyle placed three simple ideas before Theo like tools on a workbench. A solid keeps its own shape and its own volume. You can hold a solid in your hand and it will not spill or vanish into the air. A liquid keeps its volume but takes the shape of whatever container holds it. Pour a liquid and it flows to fill the bottom of a cup. A gas has neither a fixed shape nor a fixed volume. A gas spreads out to fill every corner of its container. Scientists name a substance by watching how it behaves with shape and volume. Theo nodded slowly. He understood that careful observation was the key to naming each state of matter correctly.
