Last night we gave away several copies of my new book, Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoeson Facebook and Twitter. We had a lot of fun chatting with some amazing teachers, parents and science enthusiasts and asking Steve Spangler Science trivia questions. In all, we gave away over 20 copies of the book. Now here’s your chance to own the book before it becomes available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Greenleaf Book Group gave us 200 advance copies to sell before the September 13th release date. I’ll even sign the books during this special pre-sale time. If you want a book before everyone else gets it, grab one today.
With a title like Naked Eggs and Flying Potatoes, you know that this probably isn’t going to be your ordinary book of experiments. At the early stages of writing this book, we had to put our heads together and try to think of a way to make this book different from the thousands of science experiment books out there. It’s true… just saying the words science experiment book will spawn a contagious outbreak of uncontrollable yawns followed by hours of sleep. So, how was I going to inspire my team to help me create a book that was different? Take a look…
We started by building a list of the most popular science experiments that I’ve had the opportunity to present over the years – in the classroom, on television and on our website. The next step was to use amazing photography to capture the wow-factor of each activity. It’s no different that thumbing through the pages of a
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The next stop on our week-long tour was Hamilton Middle School in the Denver Public Schools to shine the spotlight on Ms. Emily Pringle, science teacher extraordinaire. Emily Pringle has taught there for eight years and uses the scientific method to make the light bulbs come on in her bright, young eager students. She and the kids showed us her candle lab experiment, also known as the “composition of air” demonstration. Here’s the concept… A candle sits in the bottom of a dish full of colored water. The candle is lighted and covered with a test tube or jar. When the candle burns out (because of the lack of oxygen), the water rises in the test tube. Data is gathered as to the volume of water that displaces the air in the tube. Ms. Pringle’s class concluded from the experiment that 21% of the air that we breathe is oxygen (and the students are correct!). Read more.
When it comes to doing science, I’ll volunteer for anything – fear is not a factor for me. Then I visited Pam Schmidt’s class at Thunder Ridge Middle School in Centennial, Colorado… and 49 of her pet snakes! That’s right, at 5:30 in the morning, I was greeted by a room full of enthusiastic kids all holding snakes – big snakes. Each snake has a name – there’s Phantom, a 12′ 11″ Albino Burmese Python and Jazira, a 16″ Blotched King snake. Pam loves snakes, and shares that passion with all her students who learn plenty about their biology, habitat and eating habits. Read more.
When you work on the morning show of a news station, getting up early is just a way of life. The alarm clock went off at 3 AM this morning and I was on my way to meet another great teacher. The kids at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lakewood love Fred Scherrer. He makes science come alive for 4th, 5th and 6th graders. Most days you’ll find him in his white lab coat, hunched over some kind of hands-on experiment that gets his kids all amped up and ready to learn. Read more