Nolan and His Science Experiments

Despite the fact that Nolan tells me constantly that he doesn't like science, he certainly loves "doing 'periments!"  (I won't tell him that he is actually doing SCIENCE experiments since that might ruin it for him")  LOL

Last week we were learning about mixtures and why some liquids mix together while others will just sit on top of each other.  We started by mixing milk and grape juice together.  That did mix and ended up with a purple milk which we dumped out after a few minutes.  Then because he wanted to do it again, I mixed white milk with pepsi.  Once again, that mixed together to make a darker cloudy milk. I turned my back for just one minute and the boy was drinking it down!!  He said it was delicious and that I should let him have more of it for lunch.  LOL

Then we started mixing other liquids together.  First we added honey to the bottom and then we poured blue water on top of the honey followed by liquid dish soap and then milk.  There were four very distinct layers.  We talked about the science behind that and then I instructed him NOT to drink that one while I cleaned up a few other things in the kitchen!

He had so much fun working with that one that he asked if we could do another project so this time we poured vinegar (which is a liquid) into the bottom of a bottle.  Then we added baking soda (which is the solid) to a balloon which we then stretched over the top of the bottle.  Finally, he very slowly poured the baking soda from the balloon into the bottle making a chemical reaction and turning the baking soda into carbon dioxide (the gas) and causing the balloon to inflate.

Nolan loved the reaction once he knew that nothing bad was going to happen.  At first he ran across the room shouting "I don't trust you, I don't trust you!"  LOL  I guess he remembers when the girls were homeschooling science and some of our projects didn't turn out quite so well!

Can't wait to see what we do next week!!

Sixth Grade STEM Projects

Marissa is really excited about some of the projects she has been working on at school in her STEM class.  Here are some of the things they have worked on during the first quarter of school.

Click here to see the video.

Science Galore

With today being Good Friday, we ended school after just an hour this morning and are getting ready for a long weekend playing outside in the beautiful spring weather!

  We finished our English curriculum and our math curriculum this week.  Both girls took a math assessment test and Morgan is ready to move on to pre-algebra now while Marissa just has a few areas that we need to review before she's ready for that, but she's really close.  (We're not really in a hurry to move on this year anyway since they are both ahead of where they would be if they weren't learning at home)  So, with a few of our subjects winding down, we're trying to spend more time doing work online, getting plenty of time outdoors, and trying out some new science experiments with our friends.

While Jack and Allie were over at our house on Wednesday, we made "balloon kabobs".  That's right... they managed to poke pointed wooden kabobs into blown up balloons without popping them.

Wow!  It's magic!!

We also made our own lava lamps by mixing a little water with vegetable oil and then adding an Alka-Seltzer tablet and some food coloring.  At this point, we are just letting the oil settle on top of the water, but once we added the tablet, the bubbles starting rising to the top and it was really cool to watch.  In fact, I was so busy watching it, I forgot to capture it in pictures.  I guess you'll have to try it out yourself.

We managed to clean dirty pennies by soaking them in cola and we also made clear brand new pennies turn green by soaking them in salt and vinegar water.  That project took a couple of days to get the best results, but we were able to talk about the Statue of Liberty being made from copper and actually being brown when it was built - and how the salt water and acidity in the air has turned it green.

We also put a balloon over an empty water bottle and stuck it in the freezer for about five minutes.  While the bottle was in the freezer, we had turned the stove on to get it hot.  Then we took the bottle out of the freeezer, sat it on the open oven door, and watched what happened...

Just like a hot air balloon.

Now, if only they had science experiments that automatically cleaned up your kitchen after it was all said and done!!