South Africa has the highest rate of skin cancer in Africa and is second to Australia in the world skin cancer rates. The Human Alliance for Cancer Awareness (HACA) is working to create clubs in South African high schools to improve students’ knowledge and awareness of cancer.
The HACA team shares videos on the impact of cancer and engages the students in a quiz show about their knowledge of cancer.
Each attendee also receives a wristband with UV Beads from Steve Spangler Science. UV Beads contain pigments that change color when exposed to ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet (UV) light is invisible radiation that will give you a sunburn and injure your eyes. It is important to use sunglasses and sunscreens as they reflect UV photons.
The students in South Africa wear the beads to help them indicate their exposure to the sun. Dark-skinned Africans are less prone to sunburns but are in danger of getting skin cancer from sun exposure.
I always know that the Spangler Science Product Development Team is going to hit a home run… but I was especially excited when they told me that we were going to have green Solar Beads available for the first time and as the only supplier on the internet. Maybe I went a little overboard suggesting that we find beads that match the colors for every holiday, but, really, who wouldn’t want UV Beads that turn black for Halloween? At any rate, we compromised and came up with some really exciting new kits that you can expect to see coming to SteveSpanglerScience.com in the near future. In the meantime, check out the video below to see what all the buzz is about for these amazing learning tools and check out some of my favorite Energy Bead experiments.
You might have seen t-shirts or special jewelry (beads) that changes color in sunlight. UV Beads look like ordinary white beads used to make a craft project, but embedded in the plastic is a special pigment that changes color when exposed to ultraviolet light. The color change takes place in just seconds – almost like magic. Mrs. Bratteli’s Third Grade Class from Aikin Elementary School in Paris, Texas, used the beads as a way to see if sunscreen lotion really blocks out harmful ultraviolet light from the sun.
We did an experiment with your UV beads and sunscreen and the types were 10, 30, and 50 SPF. We put them each on a foam plate and had a nothing plate. They changed colors exactly how they were supposed to, but the 50 you couldn’t see. Read the full experiment write-up.
But, like all good experiments, these third graders discovered something else…
We left them all over the weekend and here are our results. The SPF 50 sunscreen also ate through the Styrofoam plate! The spf 10
South Africa has the highest rate of skin cancer in Africa and is second to Australia in the world skin cancer rates. The Human Alliance for Cancer Awareness (HACA) is working to create clubs in South African high schools to improve students’ knowledge and awareness of cancer.
You might have seen t-shirts or special jewelry (beads) that changes color in sunlight. 
