Ooops… that should have read… Freezing an Unforgettable Science Experience in the Minds of Young Children (but the first one is so much more catchy…)

I spend a lot of time training early childhood teachers in ways to make science more fun and meaningful in their classrooms. Gone are the days of collecting leaves in a plastic baggie and calling it science. Today, the best early childhood professionals are pulling out the stops and do everything possible to expose their children to real science. Of course, with real science comes real fun. Nan Papiernik and Beth Dovenspike from Colorado College Children’s Center are both amazing early childhood science teachers who are reaching out to the community and finding real science experience for their children. Nan and Beth called upon Professor Kristina Lang from Colorado College to introduce children to the concept of changing temperature to make things freeze. What could be better than using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream?

The genius part of this strategy is… Read the rest of this entry »

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I love Halloween. One of my favorite activities is to “carve” pumpkins using a simple reation inside the fruit. First, you carve the face then carefully replace pieces. After creating a reaction by generating a gas inside and igniting it (ask your local chemistry teacher for the details) the face pieces are blown off with a small explosion.

Halloween is more than 100 days away and I just couldn’t wait. So I initiated the new weather anchor at the local Denver television station by introducing her to carving watermelons. The problem was, we didn’t really carve the watermelon, it exploded. Watch the Video to see how we skipped right over the carving and went straight to exploding.

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Not exactly… but this stuff is really cool. It’s probably best described as a self-siphoning gel. The chemical is called polyethylene oxide or Polyox and it has an incredibly large molecular weight - about 4 million. When the powder is mixed with water (that’s the tricky part), the liquid becomes very thick and will literally siphon itself from one container to another. As a kid I order a product called Moon Blob - “The Gravity Defying Gel” - which promised to do the same thing. It did… but now I’m doing it as an adult! It’s tough to explain it… just watch the Polyox video.

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If you’ve ever enjoyed wearing a bottle of Diet Coke after dropping in a roll of Mentos, you know that the reaction is immediate. I’ve always thought that it would be cool if you could slow everything down and really look at the reaction. I shared the idea with our friends at Mentos and they shot this slow motion video. There are a few frames where you can see the carbon dioxide gas coming out of solution being attracted to the tiny pits (nucleation sites) on the surface of the mint. For the tech-nerds in the audience, a Phantom 9.0 high-speed digital camera from Vision Research (2,000 frames per second) captured the slow-motion footage.

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Only a very cool teacher gives this kind of homework to her students… “Using only construction paper and tape, I want you to design a rocket.” Lisa Heaton, the Gifted and Talented teacher showed her students a specially designed rocket launcher made out of PVC plumbing parts from the local hardware store. The idea for the PVC rocket launcher comes from U.S. Space Camp for Educators curriculum. I had the privilege of assisting Mrs. Heaton with the launch of the paper rockets. As the students will share in the comments below, the first launch revealed their design strengths and flaws. The five students with the best launch served as mentors for the rest of the students as they returned to the classroom to repair and redesign their paper rockets. The second launch proved to be the real learning experience - be sure to read comments from the young rocketeers below.

“This rocket launch activity coincides with the students reading Rocket Boys (also known as October Sky) by Homer Hickam. I want these kids to experience first hand the feeling of failure and success through the trial and error process of building their own rockets… and this air-powered rocket launcher does the trick,” says Lisa Heaton as she turns to help a 5th grader repair a rocket that didn’t fair well during the first launch.

These 5th graders are also using this hands-on science experience to learn about the science of blogging (pun intended). Student bloggers from Mrs. Heaton’s class in past years posted blog comments about their rocket experience that were even read by Homer Hickam (the author of October Sky) himself. Be sure to read the student comments below.

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Thousands of science teachers found their way to St. Louis for the 2007 National Science Teachers Association convention, and we wanted to make sure they had something to take back to their students. So, we loaded our trucks with experiments and products from the website along with 5,000 rolls of MENTOS stuffed into plastic test tubes and headed for the Gateway City. We were fortunate to have 14 teacher ambassadors from the Hands-on Science Institute join us in the booth to each share their favorite science activities. Aside from 500 bottles of Diet Coke and a mountain of MENTOS, all eyes were on the 18 foot tall soda eruption chamber. We were demonstrating the new Geyser Tube by triggering a MENTOS geyser as fast as we could set-up a launch (about every 2-3 minutes for 3 full days). At the end of the convention, the soda was gone, the rolls of MENTOS were in the hands of 5,000 teachers, the truck was cleaned out… and we all had a blast. It’s back to the classroom for the 14 ambassadors to start working on cool stuff for next year’s NSTA in Boston.

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It’s great to get emails with this subject line… My science fair project placed 1st from an idea from your website! Grant Smith is a 4th grader at S&S Elementary in Sherman, Texas. The “S&S” two small towns, Southmayd and Sadler, are approximately one hour north of Dallas. Grant used our website as a resource to expand on the idea of the Growing Ivory Soap experiment. Here’s Grant’s email about his award…

Mr. Steve Spangler,
My 4th Grade Teacher has taught us many cool Science experiments from your website. I got on your website to give me an idea for my Science Fair Project. I proved that Ivory Soap has air inside of it by showing it floats and expanding it in the microwave. Last week I placed 1st in the 4th Grade that earned me the “Chief Scientist” Certificate. I am very proud of it. I wanted to tell you thank you for your cool website. My teacher loves going to your workshops and showing us your videos too. We learn a whole lot from your website, kits, and books. Thank you very much! Oh! I was also so excited when I ordered a Sonic WackyPack Meal and got your Science Book!!! I did all of the experiments in class for my teacher and classmates. I am so glad that I can purchase some of your science kit items at Hobby Lobby too. I love buying them and showing my friends! Thanks for all you do for kids and teachers. My teacher told me that I should tell you about winning the Science Fair Project with your idea on Ivory Soap. She said that you would be proud of me. I copied your Steve Spangler website logo and displayed it on my Science Fair Project Board to show where I got my information.

Great job Grant! We share these pictures with permission from Grant and his parents.

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Our new Geyser Tube toy made it’s first public appearance at the Toy Fair in New York this morning. If you’ve ever tried to do the Mentos Geyser experiment, you know that it’s tough to a handful of Mentos candies into the bottle of soda before it starts to erupt. The Geyser Tube is a trigger device that holds a stack of Mentos candies directly above the opening of the bottle. Just pull the pin and the Mentos instantly drop into the soda and the soda geyser shoots up through the nozzle at the top of the tube.

Over the past year, we’ve come up with many ways The Geyser Tube attaches to the top of any 2-liter bottle and holdsof sodatrigger device that suspends a stack of Mentos candy above the open bottle of soda. When you pull the pin, the Mentos drop and the erupting soda is funneled updevice that holds

Steve Spangler, a science editor for a Colorado TV station and a toy maker on the side, this week demonstrated his “Geyser Tube” at the Toy Fair in New York. His toy is a plastic tube that can hold nine Mentos candies. A pin holds the candy in place while the tube is screwed to the top of the soda bottle. The opposite end is a narrow opening that acts like a nozzle.

A string is attached to the pin and when pulled, the Mentos plop to the bottom of the bottle, triggering the reaction. The Geyser Tube retails for $4.95 and can be purchased online at Stevespanglerscience.com.

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It has the potential of being the most popular science fair project of all time. The Mentos Geyser is definitely fun to watch, but some teachers are missing the opportunity to use the activity to teach science. Over the last few weeks, I’ve received emails from students explaining that their teachers are forbidding them from doing the Mentos Geyser as a science project. Why? The common response is… “there’s no science to blowing up pop.”

What? How did these teachers miss the rich science content that oozes from the bottle with every eruption? Combine the strong science with the student’s motivation to want to use the scientific method and you’ve got an amazing activity.

Brian Rice, a math teacher at Gwinn Middle School in Michigan, recently used the Mentos Geyser as a great teaching opportunity. As one of the experiments, the middle schoolers measured how high pop would spray when a Mentos candy is dropped into the pop bottle. In one day, eighth-grade classes and some seventh-grade classes conducted the Mentos and pop experiment with the objective to see whether different types of pops have greater eruptions. They ended up testing a total of 44 different varieties, ranging from Diet Coke to root beer.

This is a great example of science in action. Here’s to Brian Rice - a great teacher who gets it! Instead of forbidding the activity, Mr. Rice uses the Internet sensation to grab his students’ attention and put the scientific method to the test.

Your can read the article that appeared in the Mining Journal on January 8, 2007.

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When television people want snow and the weather isn’t cooperating, who do they turn to? Okay, that’s a trick question. The nice people at ABC’s Good Morning America featured one of our most popular products in 2006 - Blizzard in a Bucket. When a producer from Good Morning America called our distributor, Be Amazing! Toys, she wanted to “make snow” during an outdoors segment because New York City was unseasonably warm. If you’re unfamiliar with Insta-Snow, it’s a special powder that literally erupts into snow. Don’t get confused… it’s not real snow but it looks very realistic. Blizzard in a Bucket is an early childhood science kit that uses the snow powder to replace ordinary sand. Thanks Good Morning America.

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