Blooming Flowers

We made small paper flowers and folded the petals over. We popped them into the water and slowly the petals unfurled and opened. We wondered... what would happen if we made a bigger flower, or used different paper.

If you look at a piece of paper under a microscope you will see it has lots of tiny little holes. The water goes into the holes and makes it expand, (get bigger). This makes the petals on the paper flower open.