Entries Tagged 'science' ↓

You know those “homeschoolers” who always laugh at the ill-fitting moniker?  You know, the ones that are never actually home, and are always out exploring nature, frequenting museums, and taking more classes than your average college freshman?  Yeah… that’s not us.

We’re homebodies.  At least, I should say, Alpha and I are homebodies.  Gamma seems to follow suit, although whether that’s due to nature or nurture is debatable.  Epsilon has yet to make his preferences known.

So, most of our time, we actually ARE at home.  And I think that’s fine.  But I’m also trying to get out and do more with the kids, to expose them to what our area has to offer.  This week, we ventured out to the PASS, a science adventure park a mere ten-minute drive from our house.  It’s a former colliery, turned into a great hands-on museum.  Although, obviously, all the info and audio-bits are in French and Dutch, the areas of the museum geared for the younger set were relatively easy for me to translate on the fly.  Not that the kids cared about the text.  They were more concerned with trying out absolutely everything.

There’s lots more to explore, including a weather observatory that Gamma’s excited about, so I think this was a good find and we’ll be back frequently.    Where to venture next?

Enough with the mommy guilt.  Oh, I’ve got plenty in reserve for the coming weeks.  Plenty of concerns, fears, hesitations, but what ifs, etc. to keep you reading for months.  Instead, let’s take a look at the good.

Gamma and I made homemade currant bread while Epsilon played in the sink:

We found this in the yard:

The boys played outside in their pjs after dark:

Captain Courageous here had just watched a movie that scared him the night before...

...so he enlisted Epsilon to hold his hand as they ventured to the farside of the garden.

the young adventurers returning safely home.

Epsilon most definitely does NOT need to take naps anymore (according to him):

I made the mistake of leaving Epsilon on his own for five minutes so I could run upstairs and get dressed:

exhibit A

exhibit B

exhibit C

Unschoolish highlights of the week to set my schoolish heart at ease:

• finished reading Fantastic Mr. Fox and Gamma begged me to read it again.  Instead, we started and are nearly halfway through The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which Gamma says is way better than the movie.
• watched Pole to Pole and Mountains, two of the Planet Earth episodes.  This sparked much conversation regarding the circle of life, predators, and what happens to a species when its natural predators disappear.
• a cheap, plastic toy centipede sparked the question, “is this an insect?”, which led to a couple hours buried in our bug book, comparing insects, centipedes, millipedes, etc.  Fascinated that Alpha and I have seen enormous centipedes in Hawaii.
• Alpha and I have recently started working out in earnest, leading to questions such as “how fast can you make your heart run?  what happens if you make it run too fast?  will it explode?  can you make it run too fast?  Much time spent perusing the body encyclopedia, looking at heart info and identifying the muscles that we were working.
• read plenty of BOB books; also the titles to the chapters of the books we’re reading, the Cheerios box, instructions on the new Wii Mario Kart game, etc.
• wrote a letter to his cousin: I luv you Paige.  Gud job on yur driving test.  Love, Gamma
• taught Epsilon how to play with the Starfall site on the computer.
• watched a Just So Darwin episode on pufferfish.
• played with the Wii, on the computer, make-believe of all sorts, and built models with his Legos.

And lots and lots of other stuff.

Beta has covered the three states of matter with Gamma (at least the ones we can touch).  He understands that the same substance can appear differently.  Particularly water.

He also knows the distinction between matter normally progressing from solid, to liquid, then to gas as it’s molecules move faster and faster as they gain energy from heat.

Further, he also knows that a few water molecules in ice can actually move fast enough to go straight to a gaseous state.  How does he know this?  We tested it.

Water frozen in an open bowl kept in the freezer can never be in a liquid state, it’s too cold in there.  But, after weeks of weighing a small bowl of ice every few days, we graphed the loss of water.  The bowl was a small bowl I’d call a monkey dish (I don’t know why, that’s what we called the small bowls we used at the restaurant I cooked in a lifetime ago).  We’ll have to see what we can find out about that name’s etymology.  That ice had to go somewhere, and it couldn’t have turned liquid and poured out.

Gamma now knows that water can go straight from a solid to a gas.  It’s called sublimation.  He knows this because we measured it.  He saw it happening over time.  But wait, there’s more.

What if the bowl were bigger?  Would the ice sublime away any faster?  We talked about the differences between the small bowl and the big bowl.  The only difference that Gamma decided mattered was the surface area of the ice in the bigger bowl.  He thought the ice would sublime faster.  So, we tested that, too.

A few more weeks of measurements, and we had our data.  Not only does Gamma know that water molecules in ice can go straight to a gas (sublimation), he knows that it happens faster if there is more surface area of the ice.  Here are our results:

Sublimation of water in our freezer

As you can clearly see, the ice in the large bowl sublimed at a much faster rate than the small bowl.  The X-axis is the number of days in the freezer, the Y-axis is the weight of the water in the bowl, in grams (I did mention to him once that water is the standard for grams and volume [1 gram of water = 1 cubic centimeter], but we’ll expand on that later).  Obviously, I drew the graph, this wasn’t an art project.  But Gamma was there while I drew it and made the actual measurements.

Now, of course I didn’t bother explaining graphing, domains, and ranges to him.  We haven’t done Cartesian coordinates just yet.  But Gamma did understand that the steeper curve meant that what we were measuring  happened faster.

My point in this was to expose Gamma to having an idea, figuring a way to test that idea, conducting the experiment, and then making conclusions about the idea based on the results.

OK — those two books over there ——>?  They are totally pissing me off.

First, the French book.  Le Secret de Monsierur Verlan.  I don’t know if you’ve blown up the image, but in the bottom left-hand corner it says “huit et plus” — eight and older.  So the typical 8-9 year old should have no problem with this text.  Yet I, at thirty-mumble mumble mumble, am agonizing through it!  I can read it, and yet it makes no sense!  Why?!  Well, because it’s not supposed to make sense.  M. Verlan, apparently, does everything in reverse. He says “good evening” when he should say “good morning”, he asks the class to write in tiny script so he can see it from far away, he claims singular objects end in “s” and plurals do not.  Amusing to young French readers, no doubt, but confounding as all get out to adults trying to read in French! I’m trying to figure things out logically, and fill in vocabulary I don’t know contextually, but that doesn’t work in a book where everything is backward!  I think I need to abandon this and try another early French reader.  I can figure out this book, but figuring out what is serious and what is farcical is taking up too much of my time.    I’m sure Gamma, in 3 or 4 years, will find this highly amusing.  I, however, am moving on.

The Canon… sigh.  I wanted to love this book.  And a part of me does.  I’m listening to this, by the way, in audiobook format.  Nike Doukas is  great, absolutely great narrator.  The repartee is exhilarating and fun, and makes me forget I am listening to a science book.  The witty repartee, which some reviewers find annoying, resonates with me.  Because I am more an English major and less a Science major.  But when Angier, the author, starts waxing poetic about electrons and atomic bonds, I’m lost.  I feel like I should be reading this with a science textbook open in my lap.  And maybe I should.  She’s so excited by, in love with, her topic, it makes me yearn to feel the same passion for thermodynamics and electromagnetism and all that good stuff.  I suppose that’s the point to a book like this — to inspire literary-types to glimpse the beauty and poetry in science, as well as in Shakespeare.  But I had hoped this book would explain thermodynamics and electromagnetism in a way I could understand, rather than simply giving me a brief glimpse.  My search continues…

This week’s Think! project was to build a hovercraft using only the following:

tape
3 rubberbands
3 sheets of paper
3 balloons
3 straws
3 paperclips
3 pennies
3 feet of string

This project called for a little more parental involvement than I normally “allow” for our think projects.  It’s Gamma’s project, not mine.  But his ideas were bigger than a five year old boy’s dexterity allows.

version 1

He envisioned a ship-shaped vessel, but had a hard time following these instructions himself.  I lent a hand, then Gamma went off to test his hovercraft over our floor fan.  It sailed right out the window!

Next he added three pennies taped inside the ship for weight.  He got a little more “hover”, but still a tumultuous flight and crash.  Not the hovercraft I want to be on!  He added straws taped to the corners, Viking-ship style, but that tumbled about and was getting quite ungainly.  He decided to try making a more square version.

Blurry, I know, but the only picture I have of Gamma with his first hovercraft.

version 2

Next, his design called for two pieces of paper taped together, to make a slightly more square ship.  I again helped with the paper folding and with some taping, as we seem to have Herculean-strength tape.  Three pennies (actually 3 2-euro cent pieces, we don’t do pennies here!) helped weigh the craft down, this time placed in a triangular shape in the middle instead of strung out end to end.  Gamma fastened the straws to the opposite sides and had me blow up balloons and affix them to the straws.

Success!  Sort of.  The craft does hover over the fan, but spins around quite a bit.  Kind of like a hovercraft crossed with the spinny carnival ride.  Gamma thinks that if he could use more pennies to weigh it down, he’d have a better hovercraft.  I think if the fan hadn’t been quite as powerful his results would have improved.  Nonetheless, this was two hours of fun and experimenting and problem-solving for Gamma.  He couldn’t be happier!

Some shots of the hovercraft in action.  Note the self-satisfied yet ever-anxious engineer standing close by to rescue his baby just in case!

See you next time!

This week’s Think! challenge was to build a water wheel.

Allowable materials:

a long dowel
a cardboard tube or a two liter bottle or a can
8 index cards
a sharpie
string
tape

You may use scissors in construction but not the solution.

We went to You Tube and a watched a few videos of homemade water wheels to get Gamma’s creative juices flowing. Then we examined the raw materials at our disposal. A few used toilet paper rolls, a book of index cards cut in half (for flash card purposes), no string, cheap “magic” tape. I think we both sensed that the water wheel wasn’t going to be terribly hardy, so we’d better get movement the first time around.

Here is Gamma with his design. Simple, but functional.

Demonstrating what he thinks is going to happen.

A large wooden spoon, just long enough to bridge the expanse of our sink, served as a dowel.

You can’t tell in the photo, but it really did work! Unfortunately, we only got two revolutions….

… before it looked like this.

So… we never got a chance to try it behind a boat. But I think this week’s challenge has really sparked an interest for him. He’s making a design on paper for a better water wheel that he plans to build later today or tomorrow out of K’NEX. I’ll update with his results!

*****

edited to add some of his latest inventions. Obviously, these aren’t sticking to the materials of the challenge, but still fun to see!

Version 1: a little hand-held model.

Version 2: V1 upgraded to make it self-supporting.

Version 3: trying out a windmill design.

Gamma really enjoyed using his little grey cells and solving this challenge!

In my frantic search of other people’s blogs for anything science-y to be of interest to my budding engineer, I found a link to Think! This site hosts a weekly problem-solving challenges for your young engineer/scientist wannabe. Right up Gamma’s alley!

This week’s challenge was to create a catapult using only the following: six chopsticks (or substitutes), a plastic cup, a few rubber bands, a pen, and some paper. Initially, I thought this challenge might be a bit too much for Gamma — he is still only five, no matter what big words and big ideas he voices. But why not give it a go?

I found a few pictures of catapults online, and a few demonstration videos, and then gave him his supplies. At first he was stumped. I tried offering a bit of help, made a mess of things, and then got distracted hanging laundry. Then he surprised me with his handheld catapult.

It consists of four chopsticks rubber-banded together, and a fifth jammed through the middle. A bit of tape held a plastic bottle cap to the end of the fifth chopstick. The ammo? Raisins. They flew about 8 feet. Not bad for a first attempt, I think!
READY…AIM

FIRE!