The chemistry students at Lakewood High School in Lakewood, Colorado set their alarm clocks just a little earlier than normal today to join us on live TV for our Mad About Science tribute to Don Cameron. Mr. Cameron is described by his students as a ‘really great teacher who tells lots of jokes.’ While Mr. Cameron does lots of great demos, what impressed me most about him was how he was able to use these great science demos to build real-world connections to the science content.
As you watch the video, you’ll see how the students demonstrated an experiment with dry ice that shows how global warming makes the oceans more acidic. They also used a Tesla Coil to demonstrate what
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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
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