Hopefully Coors Field is ready for the Spangler Team because we are taking the ballpark by storm. Our team is getting prepped for the Guinness World Record breaking moment when we present the World’s Largest Physics Demonstration.
The geysers are ready, the potatoes are loaded and the 7,000 excited students are streaming in… and we want you to be a part of it! Check out the Live Streaming Feed on 9News.com and watch as we make Spangler Science history. The stream will start at 10:30 am, so get your computers ready…
It’s true that I have some favorite experiments that seem to make it into most of my workshops and presentations. It’s always nice to have a few “stand-bys” in my back pocket that I can use in case of a science emergency. But, it’s even more fun to come up with new variations for the standards. I was excited to introduce the Dancing Raisins experiment on 9News… with some fun new twists. Watch the video to check out the fun.
When I pose the question, “What is black?” at a teacher training workshop, I inevitably get two standard answers in response… “Black is black… a color,” or “Black is the absence of all color.” That’s when I like to break out my filter paper and Vis-A-Vis pens and get ready to amaze the audience. This is one of my favorite experiments to show the scientific principle of chromatography and answer that elusive question… “Is black really black?” Watch the video below, then check out the experiment.
The BBC UK called our offices yesterday to get permission to use the Inside the Soda Can experiment, that I’ve done on 9News, for Chris Jeavans “plastic-free” blog. Chris is trying to live for one month without using any plastic products. As the soda can experiment proves, Chris is finding that this may be a harder task than she once expected! When you perform this experiment, you will find that aluminum cans actually have a plastic liner, which prevent the acid in pop from eating away at the metal can. Mark that up as one more product Chris will be eliminating from her life this month! Be sure to check out Chris’ blog for some great info on what it means to “go green” in this consumer-driven world. It’s always fun to see our experiments making it around the world.
A few weeks ago on my 9News segment I featured a Seven-Layer Density column. It’s a colorful way to talk about density in the classroom. Well… we thought we had all of our facts straight, but when we inadvertently put in the experiment write-up that oil and water don’t mix because they have different densities, my email box was flooded with concerned teachers, parents, administrators and more, who wanted to set the record straight. Yes, it’s true, oil and water don’t mix because of their intermolecular polarity, not because of density. I love when people actually get involved with the experiments we are posting and care enough about the information to let me know when it isn’t quite up to par.
So, we had our density problem solved, it would seem the Seven-Layer column had experience its fifteen minutes of fame, but, no… this one just wouldn’t die. The day after my news segment, some of our staff noticed that the vegetable oil and rubbing alcohol layers had switched places! Knowing the great response we received before, we opened it up to
…
