You’ll need

  • A small resealable bag (sandwich size is good)
  • Water
  • A newspaper or book with small writing or pictures

What to do

  1. Put water in your resealable bag until it is half full. Remove any air and seal up the bag.
  2. Dry the outside of the bag.
  3. Hold the water-filled bag over the writing or pictures that are too small to read. Look through the water. What is happening?

Questions to ask

Can you make the words or pictures bigger and smaller? Try moving the bag closer and further from the writing or picture.

What happens if you change the shape of the bag?

What is helping you see things bigger? Try using a bag without any water in it.

What other tools magnify objects? Use a magnifying glass, binoculars or a telescope to look at things far away. How do they look when magnified?

What's happening

A magnifying glass works because it bends, or refracts, light through a curved piece of glass. This makes things look larger than they really are. In this experiment, the water is bending the light, so it acts as a magnifier.

Did you know

Perspective is when things that are far away look smaller than things that are close.

For example, the Sun and the Moon look almost exactly the same size. But the Sun is a lot bigger than the Moon. The Sun is 1,400,000 km across, and the Moon is only 3,474 km across. This means that the Sun is about 400 times larger than the Moon. But, the Sun is also 400 times further away than the Moon.

During a solar eclipse, where the Moon passes in front of the Sun, the Moon blocks out most of the Sun. This makes them seem like they’re the same size when they’re not.