Weird Science

April 9th (Friday) was our Spring Break Science Day. The theme was chosen by Charlie and he was anxiously anticipating this day all week. I had prepared several experiments for them from ideas I found in Family Fun magazine and from education.com.

Our first concoction was Homemade Hair Gel with Glitter. The water had to boil, then once the gelatin was added, had to cool for 2 hours before adding the glitter. Our first attempt failed when old gelatin clumped together instead of mixing smoothly. No worries -- our 2nd attempt worked perfectly. We put the bowl in the refrigerator and moved on to experiment #2 -- Lava Lamp.



We put cooking oil, water & food coloring in an old juice bottle. Instead of heat, we used Alka-Seltzer tablets to propel the water through the oil. This turned out to be their favorite experiment of the day. Next I had planned to show them how the carbon dioxide created by fermenting yeast would fill up a balloon. Only I couldn't find the dang balloons! The boys were disappointed. And when a neighbor invited them over to watch a movie, they bailed out. Meanwhile I searched high & low for those balloons (never found them, though).

After a movie break, they were ready for more science. Using online instructions, I had set up a pile of pennies, washers and lemon-juice soaked paper towels. The idea was that if they were stacked up properly, it would create a battery and make the boys' fingers tingle. It was a good idea in theory, but it didn't work for us. I'm not sure if our washers weren't zinc-coated like I thought or if there wasn't enough copper in our pennies (though I did use coins pre-1948). Regardless, we moved our operation outside for experiment #4 - Baking Soda Volcano



This is the experiment that Will was most anticipating. He had heard about spectacular science fair volcano demonstrations and wanted to re-create one himself. I even got them safety glasses in case things got out-of-hand. Following the directions from the magazine, I let them load up the container on their own. The ensuing reaction wasn't so much an eruption as it was a sizzle. The boys were underwhelmed. They theorized that perhaps they didn't use enough vinegar. And so they tried a few more times to produce a catastrophic reaction -- to no avail. And they used up the rest of the vinegar which was needed for experiment #5 -- Acidic & Base Indicator. So our experiments concluded for the day. The hair gel was cooled so we added the glitter and I fashioned them both a new hairdo.