Tag - Science

Carnival of Education: It’s So Much Better When You Can TOUCH Things!

We are honored to periodically host the Carnival of Education. Hats off to our good friend Jane Goodwin for all of her work on the latest Carnival. – editor

Welcome to the Carnival of Education, hosted right here at Steve Spangler Science! As all good teachers well know, the best education is the education that encourages us all to get down and dirty with it: in other words, touch it, feel it, experience it fully.  Connect it with other things you know.  Activate your schema!  Textbooks are good, and full of fascinating and useful information. However, if one student is given a textbook reading assignment and nothing else, and another student is encouraged to get up after reading and APPLY what he just read by putting his/her hands into and on and around smelly, goopy, noisy, exploding, changing, growing things, guess which student is going to remember the lesson best?  Guess which student is going to talk about the lesson at the dinner table that nig?t.  Yeah, that’s what we THOUGHT you’d all say! AWESOME!

Here we go! Let’s walk around the lab and see what we’ve
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Spangler Blog in Carnival of Education

Hey, folks, the new Carnival of Education is up and we’re in it! Go check it out… you’ll find all kinds of fantastic resources and information there.

Upside-Down Tomatoes a Big Hit in Indiana

We love it when people read our blog, try the cool and funky things we suggest, have tons of fun doing it, and SUCCEED!

Mamacita of Scheiss Weekly tried our Upside-Down Tomatoes and so far, it’s been a BIG HIT out there in southern Indiana.

We might suggest that she find a better place to put that sharp box cutter, though. Watch your fingers, Mamacita!

Ellen DeGeneres Wants Giant Smoke Rings!

It’s official… I’m flying out to be a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres Show next week. Back in April of 2006 when a producer on the show originally contacted our office, I asked for your suggestions on experiments to do with Ellen. Lots of people suggested my Smoke Rings demo and Ellen might have taken your suggestion (hint, hint). Let’s just say that our office was filled with lots of smoke today as someone practiced shooting cups off of everyone’s head. We’re told that the air date will be next Friday, September 21, 2007. More to come.

Water Flowing Uphill?

Not exactly… but this stuff is really cool. It’s probably best described as a self-siphoning gel. The chemical is called polyethylene oxide or Polyox and it has an incredibly large molecular weight – about 4 million. When the powder is mixed with water (that’s the tricky part), the liquid becomes very thick and will literally siphon itself from one container to another. As a kid I order a product called Moon Blob – “The Gravity Defying Gel” – which promised to do the same thing. It did… but now I’m doing it as an adult! It’s tough to explain it… just watch the Polyox video.