Science Fair

Last week I had the opportunity to judge a 5th grade science fair at one of our local grammar schools. We chose winners in three categories, Physical/Geoscience, Applied Science/Engineering, and Biological Sciences. One of my criteria for judging was I wanted to see something original so that ruled out the vinegar volcanoes, Mentos and Coke, and food coloring and carnation experiments; but it certainly left lots of other interesting projects to choose from (unfortunately I didn't take any pictures so I can only describe the winners.

The winner in the Physical/Geoscience category was a young lady who used a balloon and a wool sweater to build up static charge on the balloon. She then tested the strength of the charge by using a key to create "lightning". She wanted to test the strength of the lightning (as measured by how far away the key was when it discharged, to the amount of charge (rubbing) built up.

The winner in the Applied Science/Engineering category was a young man who had heard on a TV show how strong an eggshell was. He created a tripod of raw eggs by gluing 2-liter bottle caps to the ends (so the eggs would stand) and then weighted his eggs. The three eggs supported over 36 pounds of books before the first one cracked.

The winner in the Biological Science category was a young lady who compared caterpillar growth. She bought one of the commercial butterfly kits and put half of the caterpillars in a consistent warm temperature room, and left the other one to fluctuate from warm to cold. The caterpillars in the warm container continued to grow all the way until they built cocoons while the others reached a maximum size (about 1/) and then did not grow any more. Aside from what I thought was a really interesting experiment, when my fellow judge asked her how she thought of the experiment, the response was that she had raised caterpillars before, and it was something she was "curious about."

My honorable mention geology related project was a young lady who built a seismograph. She poke a hole through a dixie cup with a pencil and then filled the dixie cup with marbles. She then hung the dixie cup from a cardboard box so the pencil would trace a line on a roll of calculator paper. Then while someone shook the table, she would pull the strip of paper, and the pencil would record the amplitude of shaking.

Congratulations to all the winners, I was inspired by the kids, and the teachers who took the time to put on this fair.

Mt Baker cont

In previous posts, I wrote about our Rodeo Holliday trip that ended with a day at Heather Meadows on the side of Mt. Baker. The last notable thing about the trip was we had a great conversation about how science is supposed to work. At an earlier stop, I had pointed out the sun cups on top of the snow field, and mentioned that the how and why suncups form is a question that hasn't been completely answered. While exploring a snowbank Sam noted that there were suncup like features under the snowbank as well.

As we walked down the trail we made theories about how the suncup features would form on the bottom of a snowbank, and if the theories were testable. My theory was that it was based on the crystal structure of ice, but when pressed by Sam how I would test it, I did not have much of an answer. Her theory was the rocks under the snowbank (in the streams) initially forced the meltwater up over the rock creating the curved shape. Her test was to se if there was a correlation between cup location and size and an underlying rock.

At the next snowbank she ducked under to test her hypothesis

and sure enough there was a rough correlation between boulder location/size and suncup size. She repeated her observations at the next (last) snowfield we encountered and her subjective test held true. In the end she felt pretty proud she had come up with a theory that made more sense (to her) than her dad's and she was able to prove to him that she was right!

Biology

In Science Class we are studying Biology and today we had a live lamb and a dead lamb brought in. We have a few class clowns and they wanted to name the live lamb Lamb Chops.


Oh and a fare warning if you do not like to see blood please do not look at the pictures. So as I said we brought in a live lamb and a dead one [Philip says - the science teacher's friend raises sheep, so the lamb brought in for dissection was one which did not survive the spring weather]. We also got to dissect the dead one. As we were dissecting the dead one we let the live lamb roam around the class room. But before we started dissecting we got to feed the live lamb.

Feeding the lamb

When we were done feeding we finally got to open up the dead lamb. After we opened it up we took out the heart then we took out the liver and gallbladder after that we got to feel around inside of it and I think some of my classmates went to extremes on that.

Lamb insides

Lamb Heart

After a while of letting people feel the lambs inside we cut open skull to see the brain. As we were cutting open the skull you could hear it crack every time we moved the knife. Then we let people feel the brain and after (almost) everyone felt it Mr. S asked what it felt like and if we could describe the difference between the brain and the intestines. They all answered that the brain was hard and not as "squishy."
Lamb's Brain
After people got to feel that we took out an eyeball. When I got to hold the eye I observed that it was hard and not as soft as the intestines or stomach. Which surprised me because I always thought an eye ball was softer than that.
Lamb's Eye

When we had to go clean up I decided to get a pic of my hands

My Bloody Hands

Science today was really fun and I hope that the sixth grades next year enjoy it to.
Sam

Sam's Science Chat

In science we have a thing everyday called "interesting science fact of the day." this week all of them are based either on electricity or lightning which technically speaking are the same. Even tho lightning bolts have electricity the charge is brief so you couldn't use it to have a reading lamp on for thirty minutes. Lightning is an electric current ( electric current is the continuous flow of electrons within a conductor.) Within a thundercloud, many small bits of ice bump into each other as they swirl around in the air. All those collisions create an electrical charge. After a while, the whole cloud fills up with electrical charges (usually with a negative charge closest to the earth). Since opposites attract each other, that causes a positive charge to build up on the ground beneath the cloud. The ground's electrical charge concentrates around anything that sticks up, such as mountains, lone trees, people, or even blades of grass. The charge streaming up from these points eventually connects with a charge reaching down from the clouds, and--zap!--lightning strikes.

Have you guys heard of the Chaiten Volcano in southern Chile that erupted on Sep. 22, 2008 if not please click the date erupted and you will find a article. This volcano has lightning in its ash cloud.

I went on to google.com to see why there is lightning in a ash cloud and I found this on answers.yahoo.com they had what they called "the best answer" which is this...
The same process that goes on in any thunderstorm, rising turbulent warmer air causing static charges because of friction in the air, is being artificially created around the warm rising turbulent air from an eruption. Not only is ash rising, but huge amounts of hot water vapor is released as well. As the water vapor cools in the upper atmosphere, not only do you get lightning and thunder, but it also is likely to rain heavily which makes the ash fall even worse when it falls on top of buildings, by adding a lot of water weight to the ash. I saw a documentary on Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines recently on National Geographic and they showed the whole process. This only happens when there is a violent eruption. The low, slow flow like that in Hawaii does not cause any local weather effect as a violent explosive eruption does.
So that is a little bit about lighting and volcanoes.

Sam's Science Chat

Sorry everybody that I haven't writen any thing for a long time but i found something that i think is pretty cool info. Well I live in Oregon with my dad and I know a lot of people who are so prde because we have the deepest lake in the U.S.A in Oregon. So I wrote on this thing for school:

So you all know that Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the U.S.A but do you know what the deepest lake in North America or the deepest lake in the world is? Well I can tell you. The deepest lake in North America is the Crater Lake.
Sorry, but you are wrong. The deepest lake in North America has always been Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Why do some people have a difficulty in acknowledging the fact that this title belongs to Great Slave Lake? Crater Lake will always be the runner up for the title.
The deepest lake in the world is...
Lake Baikal (Baikal) in Siberia, Russia is the deepest lake in the world measuring 1620m deep at its deepest point. This makes it not only deep but also the oldest lake in the world estimated to be around 25 million years old.

Sam's Science Chat

This week in science class we talked about physical changes and chemical changes. One of the chemical changes was we put this alcohol on the desk and lit the desk on fire, the change was liquid to flame, heat, and light. We did this experiment three times the first time we only put a little bit on the desk, the second time we put some more, and the third time we put it all over the desk. The next day we had an assembly, it was the OMSI ( Oregon Museum of Science Industries) one of the things they did was show us what happened to the Hindenburg and he made "elephant toothpaste". On friday we saw a video of this guy with a big tub of murcury and he was talking about how dense it was so he showed us by dropping a cannonball in it to show that it floats.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm5D47nG9k4

Sam's Science Chat

Sorry I'm late this week I went to my best friends house for the weekend. This week in science we studied matter, and that the two laws of matter are you can not create matter nor destroy matter. with those two laws Mr. S showed us a "magic trick" he put the stuff that is in diapers in a cup ( I am sorry I don't remember the scientific term for it ) and then put water in the same cup. Next he moved them around and made us guess what cup the water was in, but when he flipped the cup upside down nothing came out. Then he had us hypothesize what happend to the water one kid in my class suggested he was a witch. When he told us what he did he showed us how fast it turns a liquid to a solid.

Sam's Science Chat

This week in science, Mr. S let us watch a Planet Earth video and we saw a part were the vine grew in fast mode.

We also saw a video called Toilets in Space. there was an astronaut who was talking about how instead of rely on gravity but air to take away the waist. We watched that video because the interesting science fact of the day was "Astronauts can not belch in space because there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs."

Sam

Sam's Science Chat

This is my first blogging about my science class in school. I will try every week to blog about something that happened in science class, but I have soccer almost every day after school so might not have time with practice and the games. I will call it Sam’s Science Chat.

My science teacher is Mr. S. Mr. S showed us an unborn baby deer this week. It was lying in a jar and had no fur.

Also, every day we get an interesting science fact, my favorites this week were that a giraffe only sleeps 30 minutes a day, they also have seven vertebra in its neck, the same as a human.

- Sam