Leah is a homeschooling mom of six. She blogs about her experiences as a homeschooling mom on her blog, Almost Unschoolers. On the blog, she has a feature called “Sunday Science.”
She recently posted about making a Do Not Open Bottle but using it in the garden. I love it when someone expands upon an experiment and makes it their own. If you are unfamiliar with the Do Not Open Bottle experiment, it is a lesson in air pressure, gravity and surface tension.
Start with an empty soda bottle, poke holes around it near the bottom. Set the bottle in the sink and fill it up about half way. It’s a little tricky, because some of the water will leak out the holes. Replace the cap on the top and lift the bottle. If the cap is tightly sealed, the water will stop leaking from the holes. When you twist the cap and allow air to rush into the bottle, the water will once again
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Have you ever wanted to be a magician? Or do you want to impress your friends? All you need is a few Pyrex beakers, water, Wesson vegetable oil and Pyrex stir rods. The Wesson oil has the same index of refraction as a special kind of glass that has gone through a tremendous amount of heat called Pyrex. When you place the stir stick in the oil, it looks like the stick disappears in the oil. The secret behind this cool science experiment is the index of refraction.
Huge thanks to the Arizona Science Center for allowing us to use their bed of nails demonstration on-air yesterday. The Arizona Republic ran this article.
It’s great to get your e-mails and photos of your children and students doing the science activities featured in our Experiment of the Week. These photos are from Sheila Allen, just one of a number of great teachers in the Department of Defense Schools at Ramstein AFB in Germany. Sheila writes…
“Well today was the big day and boy did the children have fun!
I think my favorite was the Expanding Ivory Soap activity, and I picked just the right kid to trick with the Do Not Open Bottle. We were doing an A-Z countdown to the end of school and so for E we did experiments, and we thought your activities really hit the high point for us! There are 9 kindergarten classes at Ramstein Elementary school (K-2) , and it is a good place for science to happen.”
Sheila Allen and her team of mad scientists are a great example of how early childhood teachers are having an incredible impact on the science concepts that young children are being exposed to in the early years of their education. Over the last 15 years, I’ve seen countless examples
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The final step is to drive the cement truck filled with 2,500 pounds of cornstarch and 250 gallons of water to the back lot at the Ellen Show and pour the goo into a giant bathtub – 7 feet long, 3 feet wide and 2 feet deep. It’s also a good idea to have your oobleck mixing experts change their clothes and spend the next 4 hours mixing the goo by hand to ensure the perfect consistency right before the tub gets moved on stage. How do you move a tub that weighs about 6,000 pounds? Using a forklift, of course.
