Presidents Day Pennies

Today is Presidents day, and to celebrate we did some science with pennies! Pennies have Abraham Lincoln the 16th president. Before 1983 pennies were also made out of copper. Copper is really cool when it oxidizes. Oxidize means rust, and copper turns blue and green. We needed really dirty pennies so first we soaked them in hydrogen peroxide and salt to help oxidize them more. Once we had dirty pennies we put some in vinegar and some in hot sauce. We used those because they are both acids. They are soaking right now, wonder which pennies will be cleaner.

Lets get some guesses! Or hypotheses (science word for guess)
Anna: vinegar
Mina: vinegar
Jack: hot sauce
Auntie Awesome: hot sauce


The results are in! And we discovered that they were both about the same, but they were definitely cleaner. The acid worked at what removing the oxidized copper. We then put a steal nail in the vinegar solution we cleaned the pennies in. We will check in the morning to see what happens.

Mina: The hot sauce and the vinegar stink!
Anna: It wasn't as fun as some other experiments.
Jack: I missed the beginning because I didn't eat dinner when I was supposed to.



Science Fact: The winter 1932 in the US was so cold that Niagara falls froze completely solid.

Slingshot Science

Today we built a slingshot to help us understand energy. We learned that there are two main types of energy. One is potential which is energy waiting to be used. The other is kinetic which is energy in motion. We learned that potential energy changes into kinetic energy. We also learned that energy is constantly changing, but we can never make more energy than you use.

The energy used to propel the slingshot came from us. The energy we had came from the food we eat. The food we eat got its energy from the plants. The plants got their energy from the sun. The energy changed a bunch, and kept changing into something new.

Anna building our sweet slingshot out of rubber bands

Jack launching our poor test subject Honey Bunny.

Anna: That was awesome! I loved it.

Jack: It was fun playing with the slingshot

Mina: The slingshot was fun!

Honey Bunny: It was scary!

Science Fact:  In New York in 1988 the temperature stayed about 32 Celsius for 32 days and the murder rate soared by 75%.

Sorry for the holiday madness

So sorry that we haven't been posting. The holidays got us pretty busy, but don't you worry we have been working on our science!

We spent a lot of time playing with crystals (thanks to cousin Laura and her awesome crystal kit). Crystals gave us an opportunity to learn about solutions and saturation. We still have bit more to go on crystals, we will get back to it soon.

We also tried to make plastic out of milk. That was gross! It looked like cottage cheese and didn't smell great. But we were able to change milk into something completely different than milk.

This week we talked about blubber! Blubber is fat found on animals, mostly in the arctic. Beluga whales, polar bears, walrus', seals, penguins and narwhals all have some blubber.

 Blubber is used to keep them warm. It works by adding an insulating layer which keeps heat in and keeps cold out. To demonstrate how this works we stuck our hands in some ice cold water. First we stuck our hands in by themselves. BRRRRR it was freezing! Anna had to take her hands immediately out. Then, we found ourselves some blubber. Using a plastic bag and some lard we made blubber gloves.

When we covered our hands with the gloves and put them in the water it wasn't cold anymore. If we made suits out of lard, we could go swimming with the polar bears.

Anna: Crystals were so cool, thanks god mother Laura! And the ice water was freezing!

Mina: The plastic was so gross!

Jack: The blubber kept us warm.


Science Fact: The Tyrannosaurus Rex has a smell center in its brain the size of an orange. Ours in comparison is as big as a pea.