Go take a peek…

Take a look at my newest post over at The Homeschool Classroom, where I share some fun ideas for an artsy St. Patrick’s Day!  
Have a beautiful day! :)
 

Science Sunday – How Light Travels

 
Both M and I really enjoyed our science lesson this week.  Since we talked a bit about light and shadows, it would have been perfect for Groundhog’s day, but I was too late to realize it – darn! 

First we got a flashlight that actually had batteries in it and works (hard to find around here lately with a crazy boy who constantly takes things apart).  Then we made M’s bedroom as dark as possible.  A dark room and a flashlight – this alone would have been enough to keep him happy for a while!

We went around the house gathering up a few things to see if light would shine through them or not.  Our collection (with some random things on M’s dresser):A wooden box, wooden block, blue glass votive holder, jar (with water), ceramic vase, a basket (not shown), and an empty coffee creamer bottle – we tried to find a variety of things that would block the light, let a little light through, and let all of the light through.

Once we had a good collection we began placing each one in front of the flashlight.  

 

For some items the light shone right through onto the wall.  Some items lit up, but didn’t let much light through, and some items didn’t let any light through at all, but cast a shadow on the wall.  At this point we talked about “transparent”, “translucent”, and “opaque”.  M loves new vocabulary, and used each term correctly as we talked about the items.  (That doesn’t mean it really stuck in his mind, but that’s ok!)

After a bit of talking about shadows, and some coaxing in the right direction, we realized that light does not go around things, but must travel in a straight line (you’d really think this was obvious, but not so much when you are trying to put it into words). 

Next came the really fun part.  We made a pinhole camera.  Here’s a quick tutorial:

1. measure out 4 equal sections of cardstock (black if you have it), plus a little tab (you can see the pencil lines if you look really hard!): 

2. use double stick tape to line it with black paper.  If you used black cardstock, skip this part:

3. fold your cardstock along your lines, so that it forms a cube with an empty top and bottom, with the black on the inside.  Use the tab to glue or tape in place: 

4. cover one empty end with tracing paper or parchment paper (it needs to be translucent enough that you can see through it pretty well, but don’t use something totally clear):

5. cover the other empty end with another piece of black paper.

6. poke a tiny hole in the middle of the black end:

Ta, da!  A pinhole camera!

We stood near a window, and pointed the tiny hole towards the window.  Then we covered our heads and the camera with a thick towel, to block out all the light we could:

We looked at the parchment paper side and saw a picture of what was outside our window… upside down!  The trees were upside down, M’s little sun catcher was upside down, and so on.  It was very, very cool!  There was no way for me to capture a photo of it though, so you will have to just imagine (or make one for yourself!).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reason everything appeared upside down is that light travels in a straight line.  So the light from the top of the window went through the little hole, but couldn’t turn and go to the top of the opposite side of the cube; it just kept going straight, until it landed at the bottom of the cube on the parchment paper.  Same goes for the light at the bottom of the window traveling through until it hit the top of the parchment paper.

M was very impressed that the trees were upside down, and interestingly enough (totally not planned), our Bible story that morning had been about the blind man that Jesus cured, who first saw the trees upside down.  Very cool indeed.  So we talked a bit about how great it is that God made our eyes in a special way so that things are turned again and we see everything right side up.  That God – He really did think of everything, didn’t he?! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Sunday – Water’s Surface Tension & Exploding Colors

 

We talked about water’s “skin” this week – the stuff that holds water together – also known as surface tension.

We used the following supplies:a bowl of water, food coloring, a small container of dish soap, two pipettes, wax paper, a sponge, a saucer, and some milk.

First to see surface tension, M chose to make the water in our bowl yellow, then he used one of the pipettes to drop the colored water onto the wax paper.  We watched how the water rolled up into little balls: 

Then M used the other pipette to place one drop of dish soap onto the balls of water: The soap broke the surface tension, causing the water to run.  This is how water washes laundry, dishes, dirty little boys, etc. ;)  The soap breaks down the water tension so the water can flow freely into all the crevices where dirt is. (We used the sponge to wipe up after this part.)

Then came the very cool part. :)  Exploding colors!  We poured a small amount of milk onto a saucer, then added one drop of each food color into it.  See how the drops of colored water just sit in the milk? 

Then we dripped soap into the saucer, and wow did the colors “explode” – really!  It was pretty neat to watch, and both M and I were amazed at how quickly the color ran through the milk.  It was lots of fun and M did this over and over again (that jug of milk was getting old anyway ;) ).

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Sunday – melting ice and floating air

Well, we did two experiments this week…

experiment 1 – melting ice:

M wanted to make colored ice, which he does from time to time (and likes to melt them in his bath water), and somehow this gave him the bright idea of doing a “simonasperiment” (science experiment) with ice: make ice and see how long it takes for it to melt.

I remembered Ticia’s family did something similar a while back, so I asked M to think of different ways to melt ice.  We came up with 4 ideas:

1. let it sit out in the room
2. let it sit in hot water
3. put it in the microwave
4. sprinkle salt on it (this idea was my contribution, and he thought I was nuts, hee hee)

So, we filled 4 small snack containers with water, and set them out in our extremely cold breezeway (which gets used as an extra freezer in winter, seriously), and brought them in when we remembered them about 3 days later. ;)

M predicted that the microwave would melt the ice first, the hot water would be second, the salt would be third, and the ice block sitting out in room temperature would take the longest to melt.

We checked the clock and wrote the time down, then quickly put one in some hot water:

 

One in an empty bowl:

We poured salt on the third one:

Then we put the 4th one in the microwave for 30 seconds on high: We kept checking it at 30 second intervals, and it was almost completely melted at 4min, 30 seconds.  It took a total of about 5 minutes to melt the ice in the microwave.  This was the one to melt the quickest, so M’s prediction was correct, but it took much longer than I imagined!

M was correct in all of his predictions!  The warm water melted the ice in about 17 minutes (we changed the water 3 times during this time in an effort to keep it in warm water), The salt-covered ice melted in 2 hours and 38 minutes, and the ice left out in the room took 6 hours to melt.

 

experiment 2 – floating air:

This was another experiment from this fun book:

We filled our kitchen sink and gathered up several things that looked empty, but were really full of air – a pan, a plastic bottle, a bowl, and a cup.  Each of these things floated in our sink, until we filled them with water.  Filling them with water made them sink:

We tried putting glass pebbles in the empty bottle to see how many it would take to make it sink.  We found that the bottle would only sink to the depth of the pebbles.  Any air in the bottle made it float, regardless of how heavy it was getting.

I told M how sometimes deep sea divers use special balloons to raise things from the bottom of the water to the top.  We grabbed a spoon, which we knew was a “sinker” from our previous “sink or float” experiment, and dropped it in the sink.  Then I blew up a balloon and tied a very short piece of yarn to it.  We place it down in the water and tied the other end to the spoon.  Because the balloon was full of air, it went back up to the surface, and brought the spoon with it, making it float just beneath the surface of the water.  M thought this was very cool.  Air is pretty strong stuff!

We also learned how submarines work.  Subs have chambers that fill up with water, making them sink.  When it’s time to rise, air is blown into the chambers, and pushes the water out, making the sub slowly rise to the surface. 

I made a hole in the bottom of our bottle, and another hole in the cap (which was not a very easy thing to do, let me tell you).  We filled our “sub” with water and it sank to the bottom of the sink.  Then we inserted a straw into the hole on the lid and M blew air into the bottle, which pushed the water out the hole in the bottom:and that made his submarine rise to the top.  He loved this, and did it over and over again!

Be sure to check out Science Sunday for more great science ideas!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Sunday – Float or Sink

I found this fun book full of science experiments at a local thrift store:All of the ideas in this book are perfect for the pre-k to 2nd grade crowd (in my opinion), and there’s a lot of cool extension activities for the child that may want a bit more.  All of the experiments are quick and easy to do; there’s a list of what you need, and most of the time it’s stuff you already have in your home.  We are really enjoying making our way through this book! 

We’ve done the basic sink or float experiment many times since M was a very little guy and just loved playing in the kitchen sink (mostly making a mess and blessing me with the opportunity to develop my patience).  This time we made it a bit more scientific by making predictions and sorting our items out in a variety of ways.

We used a divided tray with black squares of paper taped to the bottom (it’s a Christmas tray), and M began by writing an “F” for float on one side, and “S” for sink on the other side.

We went through the house gathering items into a basket, making sure to include things made of wood, metal, paper, or plastic, with a couple of other things thrown in too (like a tangerine, which we’ll get to later).  Then M made a prediction about each item and sorted them into his tray based on whether he thought they would float or sink: I’m guessing he really just made random predictions; there didn’t seem to be any sort of consistency! ;)

We tried the “floaters” first, and he was right about most of them: 

Then we added in the “sinkers” and were surprised by quite a few things in this group actually floating, like the glass jar, and the large plastic block:

Funny thing about the jar – it floated when it was empty, but sunk when we filled it up with water! 

A similar thing happened to a folded paper towel – it floated at first, but as it got wet it sunk.

AND – some things that sink will float if they are placed on top of a large floater!

We re-organized our sorting tray so each thing was on the correct side:

Then we sorted them out into another tray according to what kind of material they were made from.  We realized anything that was metal sank.  Most of the heavy or large things sunk, unless they were filled with air; filled with air, these same things floated. We also realized that the things made from wood all floated.  A foam dart and a sponge floated too (until we squeezed all the air out of it under the water), as did most of the plastic items, except for the heavy car, which also had metal on it.

Our “floater” tray, separated by material:

See the tangerine peel?  It has air pockets in it, which make the tangerine float.  We peeled it, and the peeling floated, but the fruit sank:

And then he played:   

I think M really already knew most of what we learned in this experiment, but being more orderly about “discovering” these things really made it stick in his mind.  He had so much fun with this, and his playing at the sink warmed this mama’s heart with memories, and also made me thankful that he is not nearly as messy anymore! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)