Science Experiments From the Science Party

BENCH RESEARCH INSTRUCTIONS

Do These Experiments With Adult Supervision Only!

Water Sucker

1. Place candle in center of pie plate half full of water. (Water may be colored, if desired.)

2. Light candle and set a glass over the top. Observe what happens.

Explanation: Fire needs oxygen to burn. Once all of the oxygen is used up in the glass, the candle burns out. The resulting vacuum sucks the water from the pie plate up into the glass.

Puffy Soap Float

1. Gather various types of soap and a bucket filled halfway with water. Predict what will happen when the soap is put into the water.

2. Place a bar of Ivory soap in a microwaveable container and microwave on high for 2 min.

Explanation: Different types of soap vary in density. Some soap, like Ivory will float because it is less dense than water. Most other soaps are more dense and will sink. Two processes occur when you microwave the soap. First, you are heating the soap, which softens it. Second, you are heating the air and water trapped inside the soap, causing the water to vaporize and the air to expand. The expanding gases push on the softened soap, causing it to expand and become a foam. The appearance of the soap is changed, but no chemical reaction occurs. This is an example of a physical change. It also demonstrates Charles' Law, which states the volume of a gas increases with its temperature. The microwaves impart energy into the soap, water, and air molecules, causing them to move faster and further away from each other. The result is that the soap puffs up. Other brands of soap don't contain as much whipped air and simply melt in the microwave.

Elephant Toothpaste

1. Disolve 1 teaspoon of yeast in 2 Tablespoons of very warm water.

2. Stand a 16 oz, narrow neck bottle in a cake pan. Put a funnel in the opening. Add 3-4 drops of food coloring to ½ c peroxide and pour the peroxide through the funnel into the bottle.

3. Add a squirt of dish detergent.

4. Pour the yeast mixture into the bottle and quickly remove the funnel.

5. You can touch the bottle to feel any changes that take place.

Explanation: The bottle will feel warm to the touch as this is an exothermic reaction. The yeast works as a catalyst, which makes the peroxide molecule release an oxygen atom. The released oxygen mixes with the dish detergent to make foam.

Egg in a bottle

1. Light a strip of paper and drop into a glass bottle. Or pour a little very hot water into the bottle. Wait a moment.

2. Place peeled hard boiled egg on mouth of bottle. (Diameter of opening should be smaller than egg, but at least half the diameter of the egg.)

Explanation: This is just a variation of the water sucker experiment. How can you remove the egg without damaging it? (Hint: use tongs and hot water pouring from a tap.)

Lava Lamp

1. Fill 2 liter plastic soda bottle ¾ of the way with cooking oil.

2. Add water almost to top. Add about 10 drops of food coloring.

3. Add pieces of Alka Selter and put lid back on.

Explanation: This experiment demonstrates some science you already know...oil and water do not mix. Even if you try to really shake-up the bottle, the oil breaks up into small little drops, but the oil doesn't mix with the water. Food coloring only mixes with water. That's why it does not color the oil. In addition, the Alka-Seltzer reacted with the water to make tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide gas. These bubbles attached themselves to the blobs of colored water and cause them to float to the surface. When the bubbles popped, the color blobs sank back to the bottom of the bottle.

Milk Fireworks

1. Pour milk into a cake or pie pan.

2. Drop drops of food coloring into milk.

3. Dip a q tip into dishwashing soap, then touch milk.

Explanation: Surfactants, or “surface active agents,” are substances like soap and detergent, which have specific chemical properties that affect the surface tension of a solution. Surface tension causes the surface layer of a solution to behave like a fragile elastic sheet. When a surfactant (such as detergent) is submerged in water, it, penetrates the ‘elastic sheet’ that exists at the top of any quantity of water. This causes a reduction in surface tension of the solution, as well as an emulsification (mixing together) of two incompatible substances, such as oil and water. This ability to emulsify is what allows soap and detergent to “wash away” fats, oils, and grime from hands, dishes, and other surfaces. Try using milks of different fat contents and observe the differences in reaction.

Oobleck

1. Put 1 c. of water into a bowl.

2. Slowly stir in 1.5 to 2 c of cornstarch. The amount needed will vary. Start with a spoon to stir and end with your hands!

Explanation: Oobleck is a non-newtonian fluid. That is, it acts like a liquid when being poured, but like a solid when a force is acting on it. You can grab it and then it will ooze out of your hands. Make enough Oobleck and you can even walk on it! Oobleck gets its name from the Dr. Seuss book Bartholomew and the Oobleck where a gooey green substance, Oobleck, fell from the sky and wreaked havoc in the kingdom.

For more fun with science, check out www.stevespanglerscience.com.

A Science Birthday Party

We did a science party for Maddy's 11th birthday party. It was a lot of fun. I thought I would share what we did for it. The invitation was a drawing of a wild haired scientist holding a flask of bubbling green stuff, with google eyes added. (And try as I might I can't get this image upright)





We decorated with caution tape, latex glove balloons, plastic painter dropcloth hanging in strips in the doorways and signs welcoming the guests to Maddy's Scientific Research Facility, Caution: Scientists at Work, Engineering Dept, Cafeteria, Field Research and Chemical Research Lab. The colors were hot pink, lime green and caution yellow. (Don't use vinyl gloves, they don't stretch. And the gloves need to be tied with ribbon or something. You can't twist and tie like traditional balloons.)



I made name badges with the guest's name, a type of scientist and a pseudonym that went with the name. Such as Dr. Dolly Fin for the marine biologist, Dr. Clara Skyes the meterologist, Dr. Pam Demic the epidemiologist, Dr. Ginny D Enay the geneticist, Dr. Gemma Stone the geologist, etc. When the guests arrived, we pinned them on their back. They had to to ask people yes or no questions to guess what kind of scientist they were. Once they guessed it, we moved the name tags around front. I was hoping to have disposable lab coats and googles for them, but waited too long to order them online and couldn't find them locally.


Then they headed to the Lab Cafeteria (kitchen) to eat pizza and drink soda. Afterwards they headed to the engineering dept (dining room) to build structures with toothpicks and marshmellows. This took a lot more toothpicks (400 wasn't enough), and not as many marshmellows (One bag instead of two) as I thought.

A structure similar to this seemed to end up the strongest. We now have a 4 foot long version of it, once a couple of them were assembled together.



Meanwhile, I cleared up the kitchen to transform it from cafeteria to Chemical Research Lab. They came into the kitchen and we did almost a dozen experiments gathered around the island. We had 13 kids, so it was cozy, but worked. I had all of the materials organized by experiment and ready to go before the day of the party, so we were able to quickly move from one to the next. And having the sink and microwave right there was handy. Especially for cleaning up the oobleck up to the elbows. The girls really enjoyed that one, but it was potentially a very messy project. I might hesitate doing that one with, say energetic 8 yr old boys.

The finale was heading outside to do the mentos geysers. We made cardboard tubes to hold the mentos and make them easier to put into the coke all at once, but Maddy really wanted to help do it. She was a little afraid of it, I think, and we ended up losing some of the mints in the snow in the getaway. I'm not sure if that is why they only hit around 6-8 feet high or not. I kinda expected them to go a little higher. The girls seemed to still enjoy them and were in really high spirits. We had to shoo them inside before the snowball throwing got out of control. Thankfully it was cold and they were willing to head in to get warm.

We then came in for cake and ice cream. The cake was a 12 inch pipe with a cap, wrapped in foil in the center of 2 bundt cakes. We were supposed to put dry ice into the pipe to make it seem like it was steaming, but everyone in town who sells it was out. The girls still seemed to like it.


I wanted to find hazard waste bags to use for the goody bags, but couldn't locate any. (Princess parties are definitely easier to find stuff for. There was no science themed party stuff at our big party store, except Sid the science kid.) Instead, I found plain red plastic goody bags and hot glued Caution: Open at Your Own Risk signs on the outside of them. Inside was silli goo, test tube shaped bubbles, pop rocks, smarties, gummy worms, cosmic brownies and those pill things you soak in water to make a sponge animal grow.

Maddy loved it and I think the girls did, too. I heard one of them say they were going to "remember this party forever." That was pretty satisfying. I had wanted to do science as one of our summer classes, but never got around to doing it. This was a fun substitute. I'll post all the experiments in my next post.

Another Flower Fairy Birthday Party!

"I close my eyes and count to five
To make the fairies come alive.
And when I open them, I see…
There is a brand new fairy, Me!"

Once again, I've copied someone else's great idea! My sister, ItyBty Frog, gave my niece a fun flower fairy themed birthday party last October, complete with darling costumes for all the guests. My daughter,Maddy, was lucky enough to get one of those costumes for Christmas and requested her party be about flower fairies, too. So, last Saturday our home was invaded by fairies!


The invitation was a small flower shaped card that opened with a pop up fairy inside.

Maddy, dressed in her fairy costume, greeted her guests and invited them to color flower fairy coloring pages we printed off the internet. After all the guests had arrived, they were invited to go to the Land of the Flower Fairies. After linking their hands in a line, with their eyes closed to keep the location a secret, Maddy led the girls upstairs to to Flower Fairyland. There, they listened to stories about the flower fairies. Then they were turned into flower fairies themselves by closing their eyes, saying the poem above, and being tapped lightly on the head by Maddy's fairy wand. (I, too, made each guest a fairy costume. Holy flower! Was that a lot of work!) The rest of the activities included "Land the fairy on the flower", and "musical fairies". (Thanks for the ideas, ItyBty!) They also danced and gathered flowers admidst bubbles and streamers at the Fairy Ball, and had a Fairy Tea with raspberry floats and a flower cake. The party was finished up with opening gifts and relaxing, watching a Sky Dancers video.



Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun, especially Maddy!

Maddy's Tea Party

My 12 yr old son informed me yesterday that his birthday and party are coming up in the next couple weeks. My son is becoming a teenager! We only do friend birthday parties every other year, saving the even years for family only parties. This is less overwhelming, and we can better focus on baptisms, ordinations, etc. This is the year of the friend parties. My three oldest are having odd year birthdays this year. I haven't had to do a party since Maddy turned 5 over a year ago. I went back to look at the pictures and thought I'd share what we did, because it turned out really cute.

The theme was a tea party. The invitation:



We decorated hats for the opening activity and party favor.



I read them Miss Spider's Tea Party and we played "tea, tea, tea, cup". My daughter has a toy tea pot that plays music, so we played a version of "hot potato" with it.



We had a tea party, of course, with a teapot cake, ice cream, herbal tea, apple juice and cream cheese and raspberry jam sandwiches cut into shapes with cookie cutters. I let them use my grandmother's vintage tea cup saucers as plates, but only the birthday girl got to use an actual tea cup. I didn't want any to get broken.

Of course, my son won't want this type of party! Gone are the days of crepe paper and cheesy party games for him. He wants a more mature party now. A sleep over with movie watching, video game playing and tacos. It actually sounds like less work for me, but less sleep, too!