It’s official… I’m flying out to be a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show next week. Back in April of 2006 when a producer on the show originally contacted our office, I asked for your suggestions on experiments to do with Ellen. Lots of people suggested my Smoke Rings demo and Ellen might have taken your suggestion (hint, hint). Let’s just say that our office was filled with lots of smoke today as someone practiced shooting cups off of everyone’s head. We’re told that the air date will be next Friday, September 21, 2007. More to come.

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Dropping a roll of Mentos into a bottle of soda used to be something that kids did for fun. Now adults are getting into the act. I opened my e-mail and received these cool pictures from the organizers of the event that took place on July 10th in Flower Mound, TX. Representatives from the Guinness World Records certified the record-setting effort, which went off at 6:30 pm inside the Circle R Ranch Rodeo Arena where 850 independent sales representatives from Books Are Fun, a Reader’s Digest Company, simultaneously dropped Mentos into 850 two-liter bottles of soda using the Geyser Tube Toy. The previous Mentos geyser record was set on May 24, 2007 in Cincinnati, Ohio when 504 Mentos-and-Coke geysers were set off.

Watch the Video: The Largest Number of Simultaneous Mentos GeysersÂ

Please remember that you’re looking at 850 screaming adults… not kids… running away. Yes, learning is fun for people of all ages.

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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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Okay, it’s not science… but I’m so proud that I just had to share it. Mark and Scott are our twin 5 year old boys who have both taken a liking to magic. It probably doesn’t hurt to see their brother Jack (who is now 8 years old) performing his magic tricks on stage. I was recently invited to be a featured speaker at the SPLASH Summer Conference presented by Frog Street Press in Dallas, Texas. Mark and Scott performed this trick on stage in front of almost 1,700 teachers and they had a ball. The boys couldn’t understand why everyone was getting up to leave at the end of their trick. You’ll see why.

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Jack is 8 years old and likes to perform (he must get that from his Mom). Three years ago, the owners of Frog Street Press invited Jack to accompany me to their amazing summer conference for teachers called SPLASH. I helped Jack perform his first magic trick in front of a large audience (about 1,200 teachers) and that’s all it took. The Frog Street Press people were kind enough to invite us back this July, and Jack was ready to hit center stage. Jack’s routine is an original twist on a classic magic trick you might have seen performed by another magician using pom-pom balls. The audience in this video consisted of almost 1,700 early childhood educators (primarily pre-K through 2nd grade). Here’s Jack…

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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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