We have had some great experimental sessions this month, in and out of the kitchen. Here's a picture of one easy-to-duplicate science demonstration:
Having combined lots of baking soda and vinegar in a tank—thereby releasing a great deal of carbon dioxide—we saw that if you blow bubbles over the top of the tank, those that drift into the tank wind up resting, stationary, on a cushion of carbon dioxide. It creates a great chance to observe the bubbles more closely than is usually possible. In our discussion afterward, the children did an incredibly impressive job of applying their minds and their previous experience to the question of why, when two bubbles are joined together, the smaller bubble seems to push into the larger bubble. They figured out the right answer with hardly any help from me. Ask your child why it happens that way!
This morning, Zachary Williams came into the school (with our own Jesse, his co-mad scientist), and amazed us all by demonstrating electrolysis, separating out the hydrogen and oxygen gases in water. The children were fascinated, and so was I. After we'd finished with the electrolysis itself, Zach went on to demonstrate what happens when a match is inserted into a bottle full of hydrogen, or into a jar full of carbon dioxide. We have a melty soda pop bottle that we're keeping in the room as a souvenir. Don't try this one without supervision, anyone! (Full directions for the experiment, and safety tips, will be available on Jesse's blog: A Medley of Mathematics.)
And, this afternoon, we began an experiment for which we will need chicken bones. So, I picked up a couple of chickens from Whole Foods, and the children were responsible for extracting the bones. We're still working on it, but we had a lot of fun getting our hands dirty and seeing the inside of a bird this afternoon!
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