Triscia is a high school math teacher from New York City who recently moved to The Netherlands. She began her career as a high school biology and chemistry teacher. In moving to Holland, she has reconnected with her true passion – science.
As Triscia works to learn Dutch and find her way in the school system, she offers free science demonstration lessons. She collaborates with the classroom teacher before to create a lesson plan, incorporate learning strategies and discuss the connections they need to continue with after the demo.
She wrote me recently to share some pictures of a demonstration lesson she gave to a class of 6 to 9 year olds in a Montessori school. Triscia taught a lesson about elements, molecules and states of matter. Triscia says the children were focused for over three hours. When their teacher tried to stop the lesson to give the children their break, they screamed, “No! We want to learn!”
Science is addicting in any language if it is taught with enthusiasm and hands-on lessons.
A special thank you to Triscia for writing us and sharing her story.
The oil left behind from the Deep Horizon catastrophe on April 20, 2010 is still threatening the Gulf region’s people, economy and environment. During the event, a total of 185 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf region. At a glance, the water looks clear and life appears to be returning to normal. Marinas have reopened and fisherman are returning to work. But that’s not the case deep under the surface.
The government is estimating that less than 25% of the oil is still in the area, but scientists say the oil isn’t gone, it has settled at the bottom of the ocean.
According to ABC News, a “mile below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, there is little sign of life.”
ABC News was given the opportunity to see the impact of last summer’s massive oil spill from the U.S. Navy’s deep-ocean research machine. From the submersible at
If you’ve had the fortune of visiting Colorado’s high country – especially Summit County – over the past few years, you’ve probably noticed all of the dead pine trees. You can’t blame this one on drought, but instead, a tiny little black beetle living just under the bark. According to Colorado State forestry officials, an estimated 750,000 acres of trees have been killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle… and this is just the beginning. But now we’re starting to see the creative, entrepreneurial spirit of people who are finding great uses for the “pine kill” wood.
I stopped in at Mi Cocina (one of my favorite local Mexican restaurants in Littleton, Colorado) this morning for a breakfast burrito only to find this surprise… brand new floors made from beetle-kill wood. While the pictures don’t do the color of the wood justice, the blue-ish tint of the wood is stunning. Biologists tells us that the blue-ish color comes from a bluestain fungi introduced by the beetle. This fungi disables the tree’s
You are busy cooking the turkey and preparing all the side dishes. Then everyone will sit down to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast. But do you have a finale to your perfect meal today? You need to amaze your guests with the ultimate table trick challenge. Yes, we will be performing this in the Spangler home this evening.
Drop the egg in the bottle, make the egg fly, whip off the table cloth and make a soda geyser all in under 60 seconds. The soda geyser will be the big finish with the guests drinking from the fountain.
Did you take the Table Trick Challenge this Thanksgiving? If you did, leave us a comment below or send us a picture or video of your family taking the challenge. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Steve Spangler Science.
We love to see a twist or a new idea for one of our experiments and activities. One of our favorite bloggers Janelle at Brimful Curiousities, shared this idea on her blog. We loved it so much, we want to share it with our readers…
Janelle took our Screaming Balloon activity one step further and made ghosts with the balloons. First, she added the hex nut to the balloon and blew it up, just as the experiment explains. Then, she took white kitchen garbage bags and placed the balloons inside. She taped up the bag at the bottom of the balloon to keep the balloon from falling out of the bottom. Finally, she and her kids used black permanent pens to draw faces on the ghosts.
The ghosts can also glow by turning off the lights and placing a flashlight behind them.
The ghosts were named and played with for an entire evening. I’m sure her house was filled with whirring sounds and laughter. A science lesson about centripetal force also sneaked in.
An added bonus for using the garbage bags is if and when the balloon pops, the hex nut is
