Papa does Science with the kids for school. He enjoys it and homeschooling gives us the flexibility so that he is able to do this fun stuff with the kids and call it school. J's science this year is all about liquids, solids and gases. His teacher sent a great book.
Which we have really been enjoying. They have done a couple of the experiments now and we have a list of others they want to do.. some of them even make ME excited about science and that means it's a pretty neat book as I'm not normally even a little excited about science :)
This one was called Indoor rain and you were suppose to use a ladle that you had frozen in the freezer but it was -38C outside and Papa's frozen hammer worked just as well. :) Basically you boil water and put the frozen ladle over the boiling water and it condensates and makes rain!
It's hard to see but he's holding this....
This ones is called Strong Air. Water in a glass with a piece of cardboard over it.. tip the glass upside down and the air pressure keeps the cardboard on the glass and the water in the glass. Very cool. They all got a turn pulling the cardboard off and seeing how little air pressure it takes to keep it there.
Did you know??? If you throw boiling water into the air at -30C it will not hit the ground?? It works. We tried it, several times :) Papa found that the smaller amounts of water got the best reaction. There are several youtube videos if your interested in seeing it for yourself and don't have cold weather. The water goes from a liquid to a gas and floats away! VERY COOL!! Very cold too.. brrr... glad it only stayed a few days.
Looks like fun right? What does it have to do with science?? Well I'll admit not much.. but it turns out that because of the way we cut the trees here in the front the wind makes a circle and it's just about impossible to fly a kite in that open space!! So they learned quite a bit about wind currents watching their kite go around and around and crashing to the ground :) Papa took them to the neighbors field and they got to really fly the kite there.. "Way up so high you could barely see it Mom!!' Very cool.
They took a break from skating one of our warmer winter days recently to watch as Papa took apart and explained a old frozen car battery. Apparently there was no danger involved as the battery had frozen solid proving that there was no more acid in it.
The fins and dividers in the battery. My children now know more about batteries then I do..
