Melting Ice and Colors!

I've seen this activity a few places, but this ice and color lesson caught my attention on Pinterest last year.

I thought I'd share our experience with melting ice and colors and how we conducted the experiment. J had a great time, and he really directed the lesson. I was happy with how it turned out!

We tried to fill the ice cube trays with primary colors (red, blue, yellow) food coloring and then added the water, and it was a disaster. I rinsed out and started over. We filled our ice cube tray 1/2 full of water (to give us a little wiggle room putting into the freezer) and then added the primary food coloring drops (4 drops per cube). We stirred each color with its own spoon (so we didn't cross contaminate colors before we even started our experiment).

We froze the ice and then placed them into clear custard bowls. We put two ice cubes in each dish, making sure each of the colors mixed (yellow/blue, red/blue, red/yellow). J predicted/hypothesized what was going to happen in terms of colors using little note cards in front of each dish, using markers for his predictions of colors.

I particularly like the yellow, which didn't show up in the wide shot above (see close-up below). I also liked the purple heart and the orange pumpkin.

Now, let me warn you that cheap food coloring is hard to wash off of hands. Both J and I were dyed for a day or two (surprisingly, the clothes remained unscathed):

We let the ice sit through naptime and brought out the paint brushes to see if his hypotheses were correct. He was spot on with his predictions:

Now, J was thinking like a true scientist, "What if..." He wanted to know what would happen if he mixed all of the colors. He tried dipping his brush into all the colors and then painting, but that would just end up the color of the last color he dipped in. Grandma suggested doing dots of each color and spreading them around:

It made brown! However, J wasn't super satisfied or convinced. He wanted to combine all the colors into one big bowl.

He painted with it, and he ended up at the same solution: brown (see brown line above the red line, below)

I loved making this experiment our own, how simple it was, and how excited J got about experimentation.

Wedding Reception Science: Sink or Float

Wedding receptions can be tricky with a four year old. Luckily, J loves science!

I think J accidentally dropped something in his lemonade, and instead of making a fuss about it, we turned it into a game/science lesson. Thankfully, the reception was outside, and this game wasn't too messy.

*Note that an item being more dense than water/lemonade doesn't necessarily mean it is heavier. However, heavier and lighter are terms a four year old can understand.

I love when we can find an impromptu science lesson.

Related Posts:
*Sink/Float
*Submarine Sink/Float

Stuck in Cornstarch

Last week, our friends invited us over for some oobleck fun with cornstarch in a kiddie pool. I figure the video is still appropriate since J keeps bringing up how much fun it was. I finally uploaded a video from John's phone that shows what happens when you stop moving while walking on cornstarch+water.

Poor J. Don't worry, he was rescued and lived to tell the tale of being stuck in goo.

Science is awesome!

Cornstarch in a kiddie pool

Did you ever want the feeling of walk on water?

It's not my idea, but thought I'd share. Our friends invited us over for this event. They had somehow acquired over 150 lbs of cornstarch**, which they promptly added to a kiddie pool filled with about 4 inches of water. The end result was a lot of fun. J had just as much fun playing on the goo than he has had at other parties with bounce houses. Think of our Goo experiment on a much larger scale. I call it goo, but I think the technical term for cornstarch and water is oobleck.

Oobleck is a Non-Newtonian fluid.

Viscosity of a non-Newtonian fluid depends on the shear rate. The key is, keep moving. If you stop moving, you'll sink, and the liquid is so viscous, you'll get stuck. The best way out would be to move as quickly and forcefully as possible, ie. jump if you can (apply a shear force).

Science is fun!

Thanks to our friends who invited us over for the science fun.

**A quick search yielded 50 lb bags of cornstarch for $25. It's not an "every day" science type of experiment, but it's definitely fun to try if you get the chance.

Related Post: 
*Stuck in Cornstarch!

Road Trip Science, AKA "I win!"

We've spent a lot of time in the car the past two months for last minute road trips (7-12 hrs each way). J is an awesome plane traveler, but we are definitely not a car ride family (bike commuters, holiday fliers, etc). In order to pass the time and keep down the whining, we came up with a brief "I spy" like game where we made up the rules as we went (nobody ever does that, right?).**

We weren't prepared ahead of time, so we didn't create a chart. If you are ahead of your game, feel free to create a chart with stickers of things you might see. You can have your kid circle or check mark what they see as they see it or place stickers on a paper as they see the animal/agricultural item. Being that we're approaching Thanksgiving, I figured I'd share our fun game.

Things we saw and talked about:

• Animals on the side of the road (like cows in the field, not raccoons smashed on the pavement). The first one who spots the animal says the name of the animal and says, "I win!" With toddlers and preschoolers, recognizing animals in the distance is a good science lesson.
• What sound does the animal make?
• What does the animal eat?
• How many did you see/could you count?
• Did you see a baby animal? What's the baby animal called?
• Why do we have these animals? Do we drink their milk or use milk for cheeses? Do we eat them for protein - this still might be abstract to little kids that steak/hamburger comes from cows? Does their fur/wool keep us warm (sheep/llamas)?
• Spot the agriculture. "Hay! I win!" Guess what the trees/farms on the side of the road are. Talk about fruit and veggies in season and how fruits and veggies help our bodies grow big and strong (and keep us healthy).
• Talk about mountains. The higher you climb the mountain, the easier it is for your body to get tired. Also, there's snow on the top of the mountain. It's colder up there than down where we're driving.
• We have (well J has) an obsession with construction vehicles, so we had long conversations about what each truck does and why it's useful (even though we might be stuck going slowly for that stretch, ultimately, the road will be better).
• Random statues are my favorite, but they aren't really science. I guess you can look at the structural properties and talk about how tall/wide or the colors, but by the time you realize what you saw, the likelihood your kid would still be excited is slim. We saw a dragon and a cow statue.

**Our way of making up the rules didn't cause contention since we only have one kid, and we were more concerned about keeping him occupied and not whining. I'm sure you'll have to modify the "I win" game with more than one kid, or have set rules.

Pumpkin Catapults

We're testing the waters for our fun Halloween Themed Science Saturday in the Park and launching candy corn pumpkins via a home made popsicle stick catapult.

I made this catapult lesson for an outreach event for middle school girls.  The main concept: transfer of energy.  Energy is stored as elastic energy (a form of potential energy) when you pull down the catapult arm. When you release, the energy is transferred to kinetic (fancy word for "motion") energy.  If you pull down further, more energy is stored (be careful though, the sticks may snap) and the item should go further and faster in ideal conditions.

J launching a pumpkin

Catapult Assembly:
*Glue or masking tape 4 popsicle/craft sticks together - lay two sticks end-to-end and glue one stick on top so it is glued to both sticks, flip it over and glue one stick on the other side.
****Please use caution when using hot glue around kids.  You can white glue them for a better bond, but you'd have to let them sit/dry overnight.****
*Repeat the stick assembly from above 5 times, so you have 6 total longer sticks.
*Assemble 3 of the longer sticks you just created (from above) to form the base - a triangle (a good and strong shape).  Glue/tape the corners together.
*Take the remaining 3 longer sticks and glue them to each corner and gathering on top (forming a pyramid shape).
*Catapult arm assembly: glue/tape 5 popsicle/craft sticks together three on the bottom, end-to-end and two on top.  Flip over after gluing so the 3 sticks are on top.  Glue a Dixie cup (to go salsa containers can work well too) to one side of the catapult arm.
*Take a rubber band and loop it around the top of one of the catapult sides using a girth hitch knot.
*Stick the arm of the catapult through the rubber band and glue/tape it to one corner of the base (we both glued and taped).
*Stick launching item into the cup, pull back on the catapult arm and release.

Launching items:
*Candy Corn Pumpkins!
*Bite sized candy bars - great because you can launch many times, unwrap and eat
*Gummy fruits
*Uncooked beans
*Small softer toys
Warnings: I don't recommend harder objects like rocks, at least indoors.  Also, make sure the flight path is clear from all faces (including the launcher).  Eat unwrapped, launched candy at your own risk.

Science play ideas:
*How far can you launch your item?
*Try different sized items.  How do they compare?
*Try multiples of the same item.  How do they compare to your first launch of only one of that item?
*Try releasing the catapult arm at different heights.  What happens if you release close to the top of the catapult vs. when you pull it all the way down to the ground?
*Play a game where you hit targets.
*Try different rubber bands (you can always stretch them over the cup to attach to the catapult arm).  How does the rubber band affect your catapult?
*What happens if you don't hold down the front of your catapult while you try to launch your item?

This is what we'll be doing for Science Saturday.  Come join us if you can!  Shoot me an email, and I'll give you more specific details.

Related Posts:

• Science Saturday Pumpkin Catapults

Silly Putty Saturday Science in the Park

We are still organizing and recovering from our move, but I wanted to keep up the momentum with Science Saturdays in the park. I didn't want to miss August (it seemed like everyone scheduled something for Saturday, August 25th, including me). We squeezed it in during the morning (sorry to those I promised that it would happen in the afternoon - my afternoon was pretty jam packed) in a different park than normal (they upped the reservation fees at the park we were using).

I decided to keep it simple and do something easy, fun, and I know works: silly putty!

I was busy baking a koala summer cake Friday night for Saturday afternoon's event that I didn't get the chance to write up the recipe for the table. I did get plastic tablecloths though for this event since the silly putty picks up everything and park tables are filthy! I thought on the fly and wrote the recipe with Sharpie on the table cloth. It worked nicely! I didn't even have to worry about taping down paper or paper getting wet and messy (this was a super messy event). Before you start, have plenty of wipes handy.

The ingredients that you add to a zipped baggy:

Once in the bag, zip the bag, and shake, squish, and knead:

Some were over excited and wanted to experiment to see what happens if you mix all of the colors:

You get a poop color

Once the white in the bag is mostly gone, take out the putty and continue to squish, knead, stretch, and pull in your hands until it becomes silly putty texture.

Place the silly putty in a clean bag to take home!

Some discussion points:

• How does the silly putty feel? You can ask this at different stages of this project.
• What do you think will happen when we mix glue and starch? Do you think something new will be made?
• What are we using to measure the ingredients? We use less starch than glue (about 1/2 as much) - bring up fractions if you think your kid would like the introduction.
• What are the different colors?
• What do we get when we mix colors?
• What happens if we place silly putty shaped in a ball on the table for a few minutes?
• What happens if we pull the silly putty slow?
• What happens if we pull the silly putty fast?
• Does silly putty bounce?

** It seems as though an email list from Lego Race Cars in the park was shredded before I got to put the names on the email list. If you thought you were on the email list but didn't get the email about Silly Putty this past weekend, please use the email on the left side navigation bar to let me know. Also, if you haven't had the chance and want to be on the email list, please let me know too!

Marble Roller Coasters

I will start out that I did not come up with this concept on my own, but I do LOVE the project.  I was introduced to Marble Roller Coasters through a Society of Women Engineers colleague in 2008.  We did it as part of their Designing Women event for middle school girls.  We did a modified version of the project linked above two years in a row and it was a complete hit with the girls!

Fast forward to ~1 year ago, we went to J's Great Grandpa's house, and he was fascinated by an old marble track toy.  Since he didn't try to eat the marbles, I figured he was old enough to play with marble roller coasters.

Materials (cost, ~$5 for 10 halved pieces of foam track):
*Foam pipe insulation (from hardware stores like OSH or Home Depot, ~$1/6ft piece, which will be cut in half to make two tracks)
*Masking tape
*Furniture, towers, anything you can use to prop your coaster up.
*Marbles

Take away lesson:
*Transfer of energy (this topic makes me giddy - yes, nerd).  Total Energy = Potential Energy + Kinetic Energy (+losses due to things like friction, for the older kids)
---When something is sitting high, it has stored energy called Potential Energy (I like to think that it'll potentially fall).  If it's at rest at a height, kinetic energy in the equation above starts at 0 and all of the energy is potential.  Once it's set into motion it begins to have Kinetic Energy (kinetic is a fancy term for motion).  A falling object has a combination of potential and kinetic until the object reaches the ground/a place where it won't fall any more and it's all kinetic energy (potential = 0 in the equation above).

How do build your coasters:

• Start up high.  Why?  Because the higher you start, the more energy you'll have to play with.  
• This also could get tricky as you might have too much energy and will have to switch your design to account for that too.
• I like to tape my roller coaster to a chair or a wall.
• Play with the drop angle, give your roller coasters bumps, twist and turns, and loops.  Use other furniture/blocks to support the track (see pic below). We use a lot of stools, chairs, side tables, wall space, blocks.

We used Zoob structures for height/support

• Tape a paper cup to the end of your track to catch the marble.

Trouble shooting:

• My marble flies off of the track
• Adjust your track to go where the marble wants to go.
• Add a bump or a bank (twist/turn) to get the marble to slow down.
• Start the marble at a lower height.

• My marble falls off of during the loop
• Situation 1: you don't have enough energy to clear the loop.  Start the marble higher or shorten the height of the loop.
• Situation 2: the loop is too tight and the marble has too much energy to go where you want it to go.  Adjust the loop height (taller) or width (separate the loop ends slightly so the track isn't touching on the bottom of the loop).

Other fun thing to try (special thanks to N, age 4 - not pictured, who found this out while playing at the park):

• Line up 3-4 marbles at the end of the track and watch what happens as another marble you release on the track bumps into the 3-4 marbles at the end of the track.

Feel free to share your pics of hours of roller coaster fun with me.

Make at home silly putty and no-cook playdough

I'm preparing for a fun visit to a local preschool.  I was given the theme "Silly Lab" and free to do whatever came to mind.  Immediately, I got a vision of little kids with gunk and goo.  Sorry in advance, parents.

For J's 2nd birthday, we did a very non-toxic cornstarch based goo, and it was a hit, but it was VERY messy.  I told the director that I'd try some homemade silly putty recipe this weekend and report back.

So here's the recipe for homemade silly putty that I went with.  I actually found one with measurements, so I went with that: 2 cups Elmer's White Glue, 1 cup StaFlo (according to all sources it has to be the exact brands) + food coloring.

Combine ingredients into a plastic zip baggie.  If you use 2 cups of glue + 1 cup StaFlo, use a quart size bag, as the sandwich bag was too small.  I recommend 1 4oz bottle of glue + 1/4 cup StaFlo for something a little smaller (or even half that!).

Glue

We're not that patient

Liquid Starch

Food coloring

Kneed, press, shake the bag.  After a while, solids form.  This is where you should start to get your hands dirty.  We kneaded the mixture inside of the bag some more before pulling it out.  We started stretching, folding, and kneading some more for about 15-30 minutes.

Mixing it together

Kneading it

Stretching it

fun texture

Sticky

Is this what pulling taffy is like?

This has to be my fave pic of the day

This made a giant amount of "silly putty"**.

I left it out all day to dry (on top of gallon plastic baggies since the putty picks up every piece of dirt/crumb), kneading it intermittently between my other Saturday duties/obligations.  While we were meeting our new neighbors, I was kneading the mixture.  The new neighbor's 3 and 5 yr old girls thought the putty was great!  While I continued kneading, J and our two new friends divided half of my putty and started playing.  They all seemed intrigued by the stringiness of the putty (all over the freshly cleaned carpets, I'm sorry :-( ).

What's left after we shared with the neighbors - still drying

**I'm disappointed that this is called "silly putty" hence the " " 's.  It's a very similar texture to Nickelodeon Gak back in the day (yes, I dated myself) - it even makes the farting noise.  I didn't point this out to my 3 year old boy yet.  It's still great and has a lot of similar properties to silly putty (viscoelasticity).  See below lesson for how to demonstrate this property to kids (if they don't figure it out on their own).  After drying overnight (and getting a dry film on top that we removed since we didn't wake up every hour or two to knead it like we were doing during the day), it felt more like real silly putty, and it bounced a little, but not super high bounces.

Safety warning: though Elmer's is non-toxic, liquid starch, such as StaFlo, probably shouldn't be consumed.  I don't see warning labels, but it has lots of chemicals.  It's used to starch clothing, not for eating.

Side notes: stores are getting in back-to-school mode and you can get bottles of Elmer's glue for super cheap.  4oz bottles (1/2 cup glue) were $0.50, and I'm sure that's not the best deal out there.  I was worried about where to find StaFlo.  I searched online.  Amazon does have it, but so does Walmart.com.  However, the store locator for the item was not available.  I decided to start my search for liquid starch at Walmart and succeeded (under $3 for a gallon in the laundry section).

We also did a simple homemade playdough recipe when the blog was a baby.  It was cooked, which makes it hard for kids to do themselves.  I found another no-cook playdough recipe on Cooks.com to try today.  I substituted cream of tartar for alum (there was a comment that said in England they use c of tartar as a preservative, similar to alum - and I've seen it on other playdough recipes, so I did it too instead of buying alum).  It's super salty (I didn't even use the full amount of salt) and gritty, but it'll work for this lesson.

No cook playdough

Lessons to learn for this messy, silly lab:

Chemistry:
Measuring
Mixing different ingredients
Different chemical properties (viscoelastic, plastic)
Making a mess

Physical Science:
How do different materials react to different stresses?

Things to do to demonstrate:

*Slowing stretch or let the putty hang.  What happens?
*What happens when you pull the putty apart quickly?
*Squish the putty into something (like a cup).  Does it make any sounds?
*Which material keeps its shape when you squish it?
*What happens if you let the putty sit for a few minutes?
*Can the putty bounce?  Can the playdough bounce?

J's quote: "It's like icky sticky bubble gum!" when referring to his first experience with the silly putty.

Related Posts:

• Smaller silly putty proportions
• Silly putty Science Saturday 2012

Lego Race Cars in the Park

Welcome to Nerdy Science Saturdays!

Look!  We're official, with a banner :-)

We spent Saturday morning building Lego race cars in the park.  We then sent them down some fiber boards (think heavy, smooth cardboard) we got cut in half at Home Depot.  I set the ramps at different heights and added a board to the landing strip of the last ramp.  The kids were able to experiment with how the cars reacted with different heights and different landing surfaces (we also had a ramp in the wood chips close by).

The kids sent their cars down the ramps.  The highest ramp with the board landing strip yielded the fastest car!

The kids figured it out all by themselves.  It's so fun to see them experiment.

The kids also added more/less Legos for weight to see how it affects the car's drive.  We also had some washers for weights too.  They were taped to the cars or enclosed using other Lego pieces.

We even got a drag racer.

We had a few tree cars too:

Friends hard at work with their creations:

The house car.

The test drive: it drove fairly well.

The Pepsi Refresh Grant is officially over.  However, I bought enough infrastructure items to keep Science Saturdays in the Park going about once a month for the rest of the year.  This month, we're most likely doing the last Saturday in July and making marble roller coasters.  To keep informed of Science Saturdays, please email me using the link over there <<, and I'll put you on the email list to tell you where we'll be and what we'll be doing.  We hope you can join us!

Related Post:

• Purchasing Information for our LEGO race cars