One of my favorite science demos leading up to the holidays is the Vanishing Styrofoam Peanuts. As you’ll see in the video below, the better choice is the more eco-friendly starch-based packaging material. As you shop online this season, some retailers even give the customer the choice of Styrofoam or starch packaging material, but the truth is that most people don’t understand the difference. Hopefully this helps…
Sure, you can talk about recycling projects, but what can you do to get kids exciting about taking action and changing their behavior when it comes to recycling? That’s the goal put in place by student council members at Wilder Elementary in Littleton, Colorado. On the top of this morning’s agenda was the school-wide recycling project… but with a little twist. President Scott Rob discussed his idea of purchasing recycling bins for the school and increasing everyone’s awareness between now and the end of school. But there’s more…
The student council sponsors and I brainstormed another way to get kids talking about recycling using the Vanishing Styrofoam Peanuts Demo.
The kids raced to see how many handfuls of Styrofoam peanuts it would take to fill a small container. Everyone guessed two or three… but everyone was wrong. No sooner did the Styrofoam peanuts enter the container they seemed to vanish… literally dissolving away. The secret was a layer of acetone solvent in the bottom of
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