So last week the day before our big Park Party, we had a final meeting with the Young Professors! Unfortunately we only had 2 in attendance! Which mad me a little sad, but if was nice! We had Zoe and Chesney at the library and we had lots of fun reading stories about monsters and such!
We started of talking about monsters and playing some games! We read "Kat Kong" by Dav Pikey, which I remember having and reading extensively as a young kid. That book is hilarious! And I love everyone King Kong inspired.
We also read "Where the Wild Things Are" which we all agreed was awesome!
I then unleashed the two Young Professors onto Rhonda's White Board that we set up in the library. I told 'em to draw and create some monsters! and to tell a story about them! Watching them draw, I decided to set up a quick science activity since there were only 3 of us! So as they continued to draw I set up the H2O2 activity that I did with the Mad Scientists during Science Week, you can see the post where I talk about that activity in detail here: http://beavervalleylibrarykids.blogspot.ca/2012/08/week-4-science-week-with-mad-scientists.html
Once I had set up for the science, I got the kids to tell me about their scary monsters, who were absolutely covered in eyes, one was named Giant eyes and ate books and planets (quite the varied diet) and Hundred Eyes who was a very very scary monster!
And then we went into our science experiment! The kids had lots of fun being my assistants and playing with the soap foam!
We used differently sized bottles and Erlenmeyer Flasks and a huge Graduated Cylinder that the kids thought was awesome!
And since we were so small in number I gave some safety precautions and let the kids play away, since we mostly used very weak H2O2.
After that I got the kids sitting in our chairs and took out a big dinosaur bag that I had filled with goodies, it had: a mask, a necklace, a few animal toys, a hair flower clip, a journal, and other random things.
Chesney, Zoe and I then took turns reaching in and getting an object! Once you had an object you had to make up a story to go with the object! It was lots of fun! I told the story of a Indian Prince who wore a special heirloom necklace from his family and how he ended up lost in a forest, eventually losing his prized possession: his necklace! He had to eventually give up his search and realize his necklace was lost and he made a new friend who gave him a special necklace, though while it wasn't as beautiful and grand, it was simple and the thought was what mattered.
Chesney played the game a few times, he really liked this game. He told the story of a ghost who lives in a journal and sucked up all the writing that anyone would write in the journal! :O (very Tom Riddle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets!)
And that was our last meeting with the Young Professors! It was lots of fun!
Group shot! (From left): Jillian, Serena, Justice, Chase, Alicen, Kyleen and Sara! Our MAD SCIENTISTS!
Oho! A whole week late, here, finally, is my Mad Scientist post for last week's Summer Reading Club meeting! Our theme you ask? SCIENCE! :D
Last week was loads of fun, fresh off from the Guest Wednesday the previous afternoon, with Allyson, lots of the kids were excited to continue our adventures through the world of science!
I also need to thank my friend Teresa! I asked her at the beginning of summer about any cool science-y activities/experiments for kids and she whipped this right out of her memories from Science World! Awesome! Science World is like the Disneyland of science!
Here's a few links to some websites that talk more about this activity!
Here are some pictures of the Mad Scientists enjoying their milk rainbows!
Brothers Justice and Chase!
Misses Kyleen and Serena
A close up on Serena's green milk explosion.
The ladies' table
The boys' table! So spacious!
Here's my demonstration plates! The left is a beautiful representation of diffusion in water and the left is my milk plate, the colours disrupted by a dab of soap!
We then moved on to talking about different states of matter: solids, liquids and gases! We talked about the differences between the three states and then I posed a demonstration for the kids! I showed a tank of water and we all were familiar with its movements: how it fills the container its placed in, how it reacts to outside forces, how it bends and flows and its viscosity - a liquid's measured thickness or resistance to flow in a fluid. It is a fine example of a newtonian fluid! Newton proposed that a liquid's viscosity is directly related to temperature, and that is what we can observe in newtonian fluids! For example, honey and ketchup are both thick liquids that flow slowly. But when you heat honey up it flows more easily and therefore cold honey is more viscous than warm honey!
After investigating or tub of water, I brought out my tub of cornstarch mixture! It also goes my the name oobleck and is made of 1.5 parts cornstarch to 1 part water, and mixed up very well!
This cornstarch mixture is a strange and fun way to learn about non-newtonian fluids! These fluids act strange in that they act like a solid at times and a liquid at other times! Where a newtonian fluid, like water, moves and flows away when an outside forces pushes against it, a non-newtonian fluid instead of moving, solidifies and stiffens like a solid! Here the molecules of the mixture react to the outside pressure and move closer together, almost like moving into a crystalline structure! And then almost immediately after the pressure is taken away, the non-newtonian fluid goes back to flowing like a liquid! This is a great example of a non-newtonian fluid, because here the fluid changes its viscosity when stress or a force is applied! - not when heat is applied, as was the case with a newtonian fluid.
For me, the best way to demonstrate this is when you punch a tub full of the oobleck - as I showed the kids! I (gently) punched my tub of water to show the water moves and flows away, while causing a bit of a splash. Then I punched the oobleck and rather than my fist going through the liquid it bounced of a rigid surface!
Before I unleashed the Mad Scientists into the ooze and globs of cornstarch, I asked them to watch a video that explains oobleck very well! One of my all-time favourite authors, John Green, is an avid YouTuber and started a vlogchannel with his brother Hank Green.
You can check out a couple of John's books out here at the library: "Paper Towns" and a short story in the compilation book "Geektastic".
Anyways, I love the Green Brothers, they are great people. And John's brother, Hank, is an accomplished environmental science blogger. Nowadays, John and Hank have started a new creation of online education videos that are both entertaining and extremely educational! So for the Mad Scientists we watched one of Hank's videos talking about non-newtonian fluids!
I'll post it here if you'd like to take a look at it!
The kids really liked this video, I think the best thing I heard all week came from Justice who said "That guy is even better than Bill Nye the Science Guy!" ... Now I don't know if Hank is BETTER than good ol' Bill but they are definitely two amazing and awesome people!
So finally, after a great deal of patience on their side, the Mad Scientists (fully gloved) attacked the oobleck and played around. Some tried to make snowball ooblecks... that generally ended up oozing away in your hands! Some tried punching, others tried mixing ... and some tried ripping their hands out from the depth of the oobleck!
Here's some pictures of the mess we made!
Kyleen, Justice and Alicen!
Kyleen, Justice, Alicen and Chase
Miss Jillian in the zone with her oobleck!
Finally we moved on to our last experiment for the day! We made some "elephant toothpaste" - as its called.
This is a fun experiment that is a great example of the use of a catalyst in chemical reactions! Here we used a catalyst, catalase, which is found in yeast, to decompose hydrogen peroxide into two products: Water (H2O) and Oxygen gas (O2) (don't mind my total disregard for subscripts in my chemical formulas! IT'S SUMMER FOR GOODNESS SAKES! Give me my freedom!!!!)
Whew, anyways, what we did here was combine hydrogen peroxide (you can use the kind that you find at Walmart and use on your cuts and scrapes although the reaction is a little slower and not so dramatic, since that kind of hydrogen peroxide is 3% and diluted, there's also a salon hair care formula that you can get at certain beauty supply stores or salons that is used for bleached or peroxide blond hair, that is 6% hydrogen peroxide. We were fortunate enough to have both types of 3% and 6%, along with 30% hydrogen peroxide given to us by the great Allyson Perrott from our guest wednesday! Thank you!), soap, food colouring and yeast into a container and watch as the hydrogen peroxide began to breakdown.
Now H2O2 - hydrogen peroxide - naturally and slowly breaks down into water and oxygen gas, as seen in the formula: 2H2O2 --> 2H2O + O2
What we did in our experiment was speed up the reaction with the yeast - or catalyst, and since I had added soap into our mixture something crazy occurred! As the H2O2 broke down the resulting water and oxygen gas created bubbles in the soap! And that's how our beakers began to ooze and foam with such colourful bubbles!
Oh! And watch these videos if you'd like to see what you missed this fine Thursday morning! Although this is a much more concentrated and therefore dramatic retelling of our tale!
And now for some pictures!
Tada!
Our hydrogen peroxide mess!
FOAM! Justice is very much so unimpressed!!! >.<
Our Mad Scientists!
Group shot #2!
The library was transformed into a Mad Scientist's Laboratory! Next week we shall have to practise our evil laughs!! MUAAHAHAHAHAHAA ha
Miss Jillian waiting for ride home! I had to snap a quick photo! So sweet!
Our last foamy experiment!
Our beautiful mess!
And that was the last event for our science week! I had a blast - literally... ! And while the messes we made took hours to clean up, the time we had experimenting and learning about science was fun and AWESOME!
Come down to the library and try to find some good science books! Happy Reading!
This week at the library Rhonda had a airplane in the sky day with the Little Einsteins!
Tomorrow we will continue our Science Exploration with the Young Professors! We are going to be observing the Strange ... But True? behaviour of water!!! WATER WEEK!
Tomorrow also means another Guest Wednesday! I'm excited for this one! Here's the poster! Hope I see you tomorrow!
Also! Here are the winners of the draw for last week! Congrats! And keep on reading you guys! Make sure to bring your reading records into the library so we can tally up your ballots!
Oh goodness me! I'm back at the library this lovely Tuesday morning and I guess I was too ambitious in thinking I could do some more posts over the weekend! Let's just say that my sister's bachelorette weekend was packed full of activity! I can now no longer move my arms properly, white water rafting seems so have awaken my untrained muscles in a very uncomfortable way! But nevertheless I am now very excited for her wedding in September!
But let's backtrack now! Last week was so fun and filled with science! So here is the story of our Guest Wednesday last week, where we hosted the lovely and intelligent Allyson Perrott! Enjoy, cause I took lots of pictures!
Science Slide Shooooooow!
So after our busy Wednesday morning with the Young Professors! Allyson came into the library - which was covered in food colouring and slime - and set up her many goodies from Selkirk College. She prepared a slide show, along with 4 different fun science stations for us to go through!
To start we introduced Allyson to all the kids and then we moved on to listen to Allyson talk about chemistry! We talked about how the word "chemicals" generally gives us an uneasy feeling when we hear about it on the news or in conversation! But in reality, we learned that chemicals are basically EVERYTHING around us!!! So they aren't really bad all the time!
The safe way of smelling lab smells!
And then Allyson delved into the many Strange ... But True? factoids about science and chemistry! She told us about water, and how while it is a very well known and essential chemical in our world it is also very strange!!! We learned that water has a funny characteristic that separates it from other materials! Water, when in its frozen state floats in its solid state! That's why ice in our water floats! But it is quite odd, since generally speaking a solid is more densely compacted and has its molecules arranged closely together! But with water, the H2O molecules are actually spaced out and form a sort of crystalline shape do to the polarity of water and these bonds are called H-bonds! It's also the reason for the Strange ... But True? shapes of snowflakes!
Allyson also talked about smells! And how the structure of a molecule and its shape works in determining the smell that is translated to our brains by our nose! We sampled different smells and used the special scientist smelling technique that all the kids mastered in a flash!
A beaker full of water! ... or rather full of water molecule models! :)
Allyson shared some candy, sweets and chocolates as well to match the smells that we smelled! AWESOME! She also eluded to the subtle differences in configuration in certain molecules that give each substance its own unique smell! (queue flashback to my classes at Selkirk! It was like a pop quiz for me!)
After her presentation, Allyson led us through her first planned activity, where we took ordinary glass vials and using some chemicals and energy (shaking!) we ended up with a reaction that coated our vial in silver!
Station #1 Silver Vial Coating! From right to left is the process of the before and after of our experiment!
Here are the pictures of the kids getting there flasks! Shaking up their vial and revealing their new silvered vial! Allyson told us that this procedure is similar to how mirrors are made! Cool!
Sydney and Serena shacking up their vial!
Getting their vials and adding a dropper full of Silver Nitrate and adding 10 drops of sugar solution!
Cody with a before and after of the vials!
Our next station was the SLIME station!!! Allyson had set up two burettes filled with borax and another solution. Everyone was given a cup to add food colouring into and then added the measured out amounts of borax and solution! Everyone was given a stir stick and away they went! We got slime to take home!
Station #2 Slime! I absolutely love this photo of Miss Jillian! with Tyler and Alicen as well!
Such good listeners!
SLIME!
Tyler and Cody playing with their slime!
Alicen with her slime!
Sydney!
Slime time!
Serena with her slime!
And lastly to finish off our exciting and awesome Guest Wednesday, Allyson set up an Acid Base Table! Here on our table we had bottles of red cabbage juice (which works as a great acid/base indicator!). When the red cabbage juice is combined with an acid, the colour of the mixture goes from red to a pinkish colour, whereas in a base the colour changes to a greenish blue or yellow! Around the table was an array of different examples of acids and bases that the kids could test out with the red cabbage juice!
Station #3 Acid and Base Indictator
Allyson gave everyone a little plastic beaker cup where they could mix up their solutions! And in the middle of the table we had a great big waste beaker to dump everything into after the experiment! The kids really enjoyed this! Especially when Cody discovered the baking soda and vinegar! EXPLOSIONS!
Allyson with the kids at the acid/base table!
If you'd like to recreate this experiment at home here's a link to the recipe Allyson gave to us for making your very own red cabbage juice indicator! http://www.vickicobb.com/scienceyoueat.html
Shoot! i forgot to take a group picture of the kids with Allyson :( But this one is the closest to a group picture as I got!
The scientists hard at work!
Station #4 Molecule/Atom Model Kits!
Whew! It was a long day! And we made quite the mess! But the kids (and Rhonda and I!) had a blast! We learnt so much about chemistry and got to do a lot of hands on activities! The kids went home with their new silvered vials and slimy slime, along with a recipe for red cabbage juice! Allyson was so generous with her time and materials as she brought a whole lab to the library! Thank you so much Allyson!
Come to the library this week tomorrow! Wednesday, August 1st for our Guest Wednesday with David DeRosa of Cominco! He will be talking to us about the animals and bugs that reside in Beaver Creek!
Thank you again Allyson! We had such a great time last week! So much so that I am mixing up our themes for the Summer Reading Club and continuing with another week of SCIENCE! Hurray! This week we are exploring the craziness and essential-ness of water, good ol' H2O!
