Celebration Helicopters

No, I won't be staying up till midnight tonight, and J's already down.  It's 8:30p on NYE; I'm such a mean mommy.  He has no clue that much of the world stays up really late and throws fun stuff in the air at midnight tonight.

Well, we made these fun paper helicopters to throw up in the air today.  Yay, science!

Earlier in the month, we played with helicopter leaves.  If you are desert dwellers (like me) and you want to play with helicopter-like science, you can purchase helicopter seeds or you can make your own spinning helicopter out of scrap paper.

Our helicopter was ~6x2 inches and started as a rectangle.

Directions:

• Cut the paper in half about 2.5 inches down on the long side (please use your best judgement when letting your child use scissors).
• Leave half an inch.
• Make one slit on each side coming in ~1/3 of the way of the paper.
• Fold the bottom half (where you just made the two slits) into thirds.
• At the bottom, fold about 1/2 inch up and attach a paper clip.
• Fold the blades of the helicopter in opposite directions.
• Toss up in the air and watch the helicopter whirl down to the ground.
• Shout HAPPY NEW YEAR!  (or whatever you want to celebrate).

Things to experiment with:

• Attach different paper clips and note how the helicopter reacts.
• Make different sized helicopters and note how the helicopter reacts.
• What if the blades were longer/shorter?
• What if the paper was wider than 2 inches?
• Drop it from different heights.
• Drop it upside down and note how it reacts.
• Make helicopters out of different types of paper: computer, construction, newspaper, cardstock, tissue paper, etc., and note how each react.  Which one(s) make the best helicopter?

I might edit this post at a later time to add the video of J playing helicopter, but for now, I'm going to enjoy my NYE hot fudge sundae and relax with a movie.

Hope you had a safe New Year's!  I look forward to blogging about more science in 2012!

Too much ice cream

Every once in a while, the hubs and I get to escape.  We went to Fentons, the ice cream parlor highlighted in one of our favorite movies, Up!  Their special was a cookie sundae with chocolate and vanilla ice cream.  Proceeds went to donate school supplies to poor kids, so how could we refuse?  Big J didn't want to share (actually, it was the chocolate ice cream and cold fudge that I didn't want, so I chose an alternate ice cream with hot fudge - that I couldn't finish).

Big J spent a good portion of the date calculating how much ice cream he was eating/ate (see before pic above).  I think he estimated a liter of ice cream through measuring approximate diameter of the ice cream scoops with his fingertips.  He was very determined to finish it.  No wonder he got the chills afterward.

Robot Arm

This is how I spent the first day of my winter vacation:

I'll post video of J playing with it soon. It needs to be bolted down so it doesn't tip over when the arm is pushed all of the way down. We're brainstorming ways to also get it to stop before the motor skips if pushed to its limits. Since it was a cheap kit, it's probably going to be hard to make adjustments. If you are a little more familiar with electronics, suggestions are greatly appreciated.

In terms of what I am hoping to show with it:

• Robots are cool!
• Input and response (controls)
• Make the robot go up/down, side/side, open/close (my 2 yr old can do this)
• Pick up objects and put them down somewhere else (more advanced)

Other plans to go with robot curriculum

• Electricity and circuits (still working on how exactly this will play out for the little ones)
• Gears (yay mechanical engineering!)
• Controller game (something I'm creating for the 4-7 yr olds to learn how to use programming type language and learn about degrees of a circle and distances - stay tuned)

Shout-out to Home Depot

I took a trip to Home Depot today. I had a list of items for the shake table and a couple of helpful workers that were eager to assist. One of my biggest concerns was cutting the wooden pieces to the correct sizes. They did all of the cutting for me and saved me a few hours of finding a place or the tools to do the cutting. And, since it was cut, everything fit in my small car's trunk.

Upon asking one worker for assistance, I got to talking about my project and grant. It turned out that he was a manager and gave me 10% off too! Awesome!

Here's what I ended up with:

All in all, I was extremely thankful for a pleasant experience (my visit to Radio Shack yesterday wasn't as pleasant).  I have a few more things to purchase, and I'm hoping to have shake tables ready by the end of the month.

Ah, science!