May 7, 2008

A Hoosier Win at the Science Fair!

Brandt Callahan and Jackson Bartlett, who go to Parkview Intermediate School in Bedford, Indiana, took the Experiment of the Week and won FIRST PRIZE in the third grade division of the Science Fair!

In fact, Brandt and Jackson added a little OOMPH to the experiment by using several different kinds of cereal instead of just one, and using a blender instead of a baggie and their hands. The boys admit that most of the cereals they used just didn’t seem to have any iron in them, in spite of what their labels claimed.

Next time, they’re going to use Life cereal, because they want to SEE the little black dots of iron! They've also decided that there definitely won't be any raisins involved - the ICK factor was just too high with raisins.

Brandt and Jackson are in the third grade, and they learned about this experiment from their teacher. Jackson had won First Prize in first grade, and

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July 11, 2007

Exploding Watermelons

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.

June 18, 2007

Water Flowing Uphill?

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.

June 6, 2007

Mentos Slow Motion Video

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.

May 8, 2007

Young Rocket Scientists Inspired by Homer Hickam

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 … (more...)