Inspiration
The idea for this week's festivities arrived out of the blue while eating a lovely dinner out with the family. The girls were talking about magic tricks that some of their friends had done which lead my mind down the path of other nice tricks we can get our minds and bodies to pull off. Most of it will be nerve and muscle training and confusion. This is a great low/no prep event too as nothing needs to be bought and can even easily be done while away from the home/lab.
Materials
3 bowls of water (hot/warm/cold)
1 blindfold
1 doorway or similar barrier ~ wider than the subjects shoulders
Eager volunteers willing to follow directions
Notes
There are a few "tricks" I have in mind for this event, first is the deceptive sense of touch with regard to heat. For this we use the bowls of water and have the kids don blindfolds and puts their hands each in either a hot or cold bowl for a minute. After they describe what they think of the water temperature (in secret) have them both switch to the warm bowl and describe again and let them discuss. Next let one kid at a time do one hand in each hot/cold and then let them feel and describe the sensations when they put both hands in to the room temp bowl. The girls were appropriately amazed at how their bodies could tell temperature differences well but were lousy at being more specific.
The second one involves the doorways and having the kids spend a minute pushing as hard as they can against them with the back of their hands for a minute or two. Afterwords have them step out and tell them to let their arms hang loose like spaghetti and enjoy effect as their arms seem to float up on their own. After that we did one where they double invert their hands and fingers and we point to one (do not touch) and have them try and move it, everyone ended up moving the fingers on their wrong hands the first time. They both had good floating arm results here.
The last trick is a two person event with someone linking index and middle fingers into a sort of handle for the other kids to squeeze as hard as they can for a couple minutes. When done, have the squeezer let go and hold their hand out palm up, at this point ask them to straighten their fingers out and watch as they can't get their hand to obey. Lana had great results from this one as she was really putting in major efforts to the squeezing.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Stamspud Cannon
January 29
Inspiration
This one came as a suggestion from my friend Clay Johnson who is a veteran of many spud launcher campaigns. There are oodles of plans and models out there for the picking, I went with a straight forward combustion based mid size plan for our first attempt. I was also feeling guilty for missing a weekend due to work, and wanted to something extra exciting to make it up to the girls.
Materials
1 x 4" PVC T joint - combustion chamber
2 x 4" PVC screw on cap pairs - one for the igniter trigger and one for access to add fuel.
4" - 3" PVC adapter - barrel (inside tip filed somewhat sharp to help cut and compress the potatoes)
4' x 3" PVC pipe - connector fro barrel to chamber
4' x 1.5 PVC pipe - rammer to push potatoes to about a hand width away from the combustion chamber
1 gas grill replacement igniter - trigger mechanism and ignition source
1 can of Aquanet hair spray - fuel (about 2-3 seconds is plenty for this size chamber)
1 bag of yukon gold potatoes - ammunition
1 rubber mallet - to jam and trim the shot in to the barrel.
Notes
This was a fun project to find supplies for and build and probably our most carefully planned event to date. I looked up various plans and possible legal issues as well as I could (eventually confirming with a local police officer that we wouldn't get in trouble for this so long as we were safe with it). We found a nice big abandoned field nearby for the proving grounds as well. Assembly was easy and with a hand saw and drill for the igniter (which I stripped down to its base components before fixing to an end cap). I was also glad to do test fires with the bare igniter in the closet with the girls to explain how that worked, along with dry runs with an open chamber and hair spray so we could test the fuel and ignition combo, and so the girls could see the flames involved in the combustion. We had previously talked about hot air expanding with a few other experiments so they had a good grounding in the physics involved. The results were spectacular to say the least, launching spuds between 100 and 150 years with ease. We turned the actual launching in to a drummer hoff like event letting them each play different parts. Eventually with some refinements we've gotten the cannon to send them over 190 yards.
Inspiration
This one came as a suggestion from my friend Clay Johnson who is a veteran of many spud launcher campaigns. There are oodles of plans and models out there for the picking, I went with a straight forward combustion based mid size plan for our first attempt. I was also feeling guilty for missing a weekend due to work, and wanted to something extra exciting to make it up to the girls.
Materials
1 x 4" PVC T joint - combustion chamber
2 x 4" PVC screw on cap pairs - one for the igniter trigger and one for access to add fuel.
4" - 3" PVC adapter - barrel (inside tip filed somewhat sharp to help cut and compress the potatoes)
4' x 3" PVC pipe - connector fro barrel to chamber
4' x 1.5 PVC pipe - rammer to push potatoes to about a hand width away from the combustion chamber
1 gas grill replacement igniter - trigger mechanism and ignition source
1 can of Aquanet hair spray - fuel (about 2-3 seconds is plenty for this size chamber)
1 bag of yukon gold potatoes - ammunition
1 rubber mallet - to jam and trim the shot in to the barrel.
Notes
This was a fun project to find supplies for and build and probably our most carefully planned event to date. I looked up various plans and possible legal issues as well as I could (eventually confirming with a local police officer that we wouldn't get in trouble for this so long as we were safe with it). We found a nice big abandoned field nearby for the proving grounds as well. Assembly was easy and with a hand saw and drill for the igniter (which I stripped down to its base components before fixing to an end cap). I was also glad to do test fires with the bare igniter in the closet with the girls to explain how that worked, along with dry runs with an open chamber and hair spray so we could test the fuel and ignition combo, and so the girls could see the flames involved in the combustion. We had previously talked about hot air expanding with a few other experiments so they had a good grounding in the physics involved. The results were spectacular to say the least, launching spuds between 100 and 150 years with ease. We turned the actual launching in to a drummer hoff like event letting them each play different parts. Eventually with some refinements we've gotten the cannon to send them over 190 yards.
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| Here I am doing my best Corporal Ferrel. |
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| Lana aka Major Scott bringing the shot. |
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| Sargent Chowder bringing the powder (or Aquanet in this case). |
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| Lana pounding the first shot down the barrel. |
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| Noelle doing her best Captain Bammer as she rams the shot in to position. |
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| Noelle and Lana going out in search of the evidence. |
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Egg Drop
February 12
Inspiration
This was a direct follow up to the gravity experiments of the previous week. I took a cue from the PBS program Fetch where they give the kids materials, a goal and a bunch of building materials and mostly turn them loose.
Materials
2 hard boiled eggs - for the early test
1 raw egg - more if you're brave & feeling messy enough to use raw for their first drafts
bags, papers, tape, egg cartons, coffee filters, napkins, staples, scissors, hole punchers, and anything else that comes to mind.
Notes
Lana started with strings tied to paper coffee filters attached to a single cup egg carton basket. When that failed with solid crash Noelle upgraded the chute size to a plastic grocery bag attached to another single carton basket. They had to upgrade from tape to staples to hold the bag on to the basket by the handles but once she got those secured it worked like a champ. A few successful drops and we upgraded to the raw egg without incident from the playhouse and on to the bedroom window of our real house for the finale. I loved how they continued to refine their ideas both based on successes and failures which is so important to learn.
Inspiration
This was a direct follow up to the gravity experiments of the previous week. I took a cue from the PBS program Fetch where they give the kids materials, a goal and a bunch of building materials and mostly turn them loose.
Materials
2 hard boiled eggs - for the early test
1 raw egg - more if you're brave & feeling messy enough to use raw for their first drafts
bags, papers, tape, egg cartons, coffee filters, napkins, staples, scissors, hole punchers, and anything else that comes to mind.
Notes
Lana started with strings tied to paper coffee filters attached to a single cup egg carton basket. When that failed with solid crash Noelle upgraded the chute size to a plastic grocery bag attached to another single carton basket. They had to upgrade from tape to staples to hold the bag on to the basket by the handles but once she got those secured it worked like a champ. A few successful drops and we upgraded to the raw egg without incident from the playhouse and on to the bedroom window of our real house for the finale. I loved how they continued to refine their ideas both based on successes and failures which is so important to learn.
Gravity
February 5
Inspiration
This was a low prep time week drawn from what I had on hand and a dose of School House Rock.
Materials
Various balls of similar size and shape with a wide variety of densities.
Someplace modestly high to drop them from.
Postage scale for some instrumentation and data collection
Camera for catching the action.
Notes
As with many quickly improvised sessions that are not so flashy visually, I tended to double up on the discussion portion. We were very methodical about measuring each one recording them in a spreadsheet from 7 grams for the wiffle golf ball through 137 grams for the solid steel D20. The girls dropped them from the play house in pairs as I snapped pictures. We were able to detect slight differences in the most extreme cases from air resistance usually dwarfed by drop timing variance.
Inspiration
This was a low prep time week drawn from what I had on hand and a dose of School House Rock.
Materials
Various balls of similar size and shape with a wide variety of densities.
Someplace modestly high to drop them from.
Postage scale for some instrumentation and data collection
Camera for catching the action.
Notes
As with many quickly improvised sessions that are not so flashy visually, I tended to double up on the discussion portion. We were very methodical about measuring each one recording them in a spreadsheet from 7 grams for the wiffle golf ball through 137 grams for the solid steel D20. The girls dropped them from the play house in pairs as I snapped pictures. We were able to detect slight differences in the most extreme cases from air resistance usually dwarfed by drop timing variance.
Light-bulb
February 19
Inspiration
This week's idea comes as a suggestion from Rob Carroll who found a video on a homemade light bulb. It also tied in well with another geeky thing we did this weekend which was to get together with friends to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon while eating like hobbits (~7 meals in a day) during the 12+ hours of fantasy goodness. The girls liked that the Shelob (the big scary spider monster from the 3rd movie for the uninitiated) was terrified of the magic light-bulb vial and so we set about making our own magic.
Materials
8 C-Cell batteries - to provide the juice
1 pack of 0.7mm pencil leads - to act as a filament
2 alligator clips - to hold the filament
3' of wire - to complete the circuit
electrical tape - to hold it all thogether
1 glass jar - to reduce air flow and protect against shattering filament shards
1 small tub of play dough - to seal the jar/bulb better
Notes
I found that the clips I bought at the hardware store were a bit too strong for the 0.7mm leads and tended to snap them prematurely so I would recommend some weaker spring flips from a more small scale electronics place. Lana thought of adding clay to the bottom of the jar to get a better seal to keep air out of the chamber which worked great. Varying the length and diameter of the filament along with the number of batteries and volts will be ways I plan to further explore the electrical and combustion principals that we illustrated today. With this set up we got about 20-30 seconds of glow time before a filament burned out with very cool visible thinning that Noelle noticed even before the first one burned out (4th picture shows a partially used filament with this effect).
Inspiration
This week's idea comes as a suggestion from Rob Carroll who found a video on a homemade light bulb. It also tied in well with another geeky thing we did this weekend which was to get together with friends to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon while eating like hobbits (~7 meals in a day) during the 12+ hours of fantasy goodness. The girls liked that the Shelob (the big scary spider monster from the 3rd movie for the uninitiated) was terrified of the magic light-bulb vial and so we set about making our own magic.
Materials
8 C-Cell batteries - to provide the juice
1 pack of 0.7mm pencil leads - to act as a filament
2 alligator clips - to hold the filament
3' of wire - to complete the circuit
electrical tape - to hold it all thogether
1 glass jar - to reduce air flow and protect against shattering filament shards
1 small tub of play dough - to seal the jar/bulb better
Notes
I found that the clips I bought at the hardware store were a bit too strong for the 0.7mm leads and tended to snap them prematurely so I would recommend some weaker spring flips from a more small scale electronics place. Lana thought of adding clay to the bottom of the jar to get a better seal to keep air out of the chamber which worked great. Varying the length and diameter of the filament along with the number of batteries and volts will be ways I plan to further explore the electrical and combustion principals that we illustrated today. With this set up we got about 20-30 seconds of glow time before a filament burned out with very cool visible thinning that Noelle noticed even before the first one burned out (4th picture shows a partially used filament with this effect).
Introductions
After much encouragement from friends and family I've decided to take the next step beyond sharing pictures and few thoughts our weekly science experiments on Facebook to a blog with more room for details. My mother wanted me to write an actual book but is as that won't happen any time soon I'll see what I can get organized and documented here. I'm sure it will take me a while to settle on a comfortable format, so until that happens you'll have to bear with me as I get used to organizing and presenting these. Also due to our busy schedules Science Saturdays somehow often turn in to Science Sundays when things get extra hectic.
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