Hi there, I don't know if this is an appropriate place to put this, so forgive me if this isn't right! Here's a great summer activity that kids really have fun with, AND learn some good stuff at the same time. I want my kids to have fun during the summer, but I also sometimes feel bad sending them to "empty" activities where they just play each day, but I wish they also learned something. So, here's three cool activities that kids love... ---------------------- Microwaving Soap When you warm up leftovers, have you ever wondered why the microwave heats the food and not the plate? (Well, some plates, anyway.) It has to do with the way microwaves work. Microwaves use dielectric heating (or high frequency heating) to heat your food. Basically, the microwave oven shoots light beams that are tuned to excite the water molecule. Foods that contain water will step up a notch in energy levels as heat. (The microwave radiation can also excite other polarized molecules in addition to the water molecule, which is why some plates also get hot.) The following experiment is a quick example of this principle using a naked bar of Ivory soap. The trick is to use Ivory, which contains an unusually high amount of air. Since air contains water moisture, Ivory also has water hidden inside the bar of soap. The microwave will excite the water molecules and your kids will never look at the soap the same way again. Toss a naked bar of Ivory soap onto a glass or ceramic plate and stick it into the microwave on HIGH for 2-3 minutes. Watch intently and remove when it reaches a “maximum”. Be careful when you touch it after taking it out of the microwave oven – it may still hold steam inside. You can still use the soap after this experiment! Plasma Grape You can create the fourth state of matter in your microwave using food. Note – this is NOT the kind of plasma doctors talk about that’s associated with blood. These are two entirely different things that just happen to have the same name. It’s like the word ‘trunk’, which could be either the storage compartment of a car or an elephant’s nose. Make sense? Plasma is what happens when you add enough energy (often in the form of raising the temperature) to a gas so that the electrons break free and start zinging around on their own. Since electrons have a negative charge, having a bunch of free-riding electrons causes the gas to become electrically charged. This gives some cool properties to the gas. Anytime you have charged particles (like naked electrons) off on their own, they are referred to by scientists as ions. So here’s what you need to do - you need a microwave, a grape, and a knife. 1. Carefully cut the grape almost in half. You want to leave a bit of skin connecting the two halves. 2. Open the grape like a book. In other words, so that the two halves are next to one another still attached by the skin. 3. Put the grape into the microwave with the outside part of the grape facing down and the inside part facing up. 4. Close the door and set the microwave for ten seconds. You may want to dim the lights in the room. You should see a bluish or yellowish light coming from the middle section of the grape. This is plasma! Be careful not to overcook the grape. It will smoke and stink if you let it overcook. Also, make sure the grape has time to cool before taking it out of the microwave. Other places you can find plasma include neon signs, fluorescent lights, plasma globes, and small traces of it are found in a flame. Disappearing Glass You can bend light to make objects disappear. You’ll need two glass containers (one that fits inside the other), and the smaller one MUST be Pyrex. It’s okay if your Pyrex glass has markings on the side. Use cooking oil such as canola oil, olive oil, or others to see which makes yours truly disappear. You can also try mineral oil or Karo syrup, although these tend to be more sensitive to temperature and aren’t as evenly matched with the Pyrex as the first choices mentioned above. When a beam of light hits a different substance (like glass), the speed of light changes. The color of the light (called the wavelength) can also change. In some cases, the change of wavelength turns into a change in the direction of the beam. For example, if you stick a pencil is a glass of water and look through the side of the glass, you’ll notice that the pencil appears shifted. The speed of light is slower in the water (140,000 miles per second) than in the air (186,000 miles per second), called optical density, and the result is bent light beams and broken pencils. You’ll notice that the pencil doesn’t always appear broken. Depending on where your eyeballs are, you can see an intact or broken pencil. This is a very fine point about refraction: when light enters a new substance (like going from air to water) perpendicular to the surface (looking straight on), refractions do not occur. However, if you look at the glass at an angle, then depending on your sight angle, you’ll see a different amount of shift in the pencil. Where do you need to look to see the greatest shift in the two halves of the pencil? (Hint: move the pencil back and forth slowly.) Depending on if the light is going from a lighter to an optically denser material (or vice versa), it will bend different amounts. Glass is optically denser than water, which is denser than air. Here’s a chart: Vacuum 1.0000 Air 1.0003 Ice 1.3100 Water 1.3333 Pyrex 1.4740 Cooking Oil 1.4740 Diamond 2.4170 This means if you place a Pyrex container inside a beaker of vegetable oil, it will disappear. This also works for some mineral oils and Karo syrup. Note however that the optical densities of liquids vary with temperature and concentration, and manufacturers are not perfectly consistent when they whip up a batch of this stuff, so some adjustments are needed. Not only can you change the shape of objects by bending light (broken or whole), but you can also change the size. Magnifying lenses, telescopes, and microscopes use this idea to make objects appear different sizes. -------------------------- I know your kids will love these! I teach summer science camps (actually, they're online camps kids do from home) and this is always one of the most popular activities with kids. They can't wait to tell their parents about what they learned, and then they go on to try to invent new variations of it on their own. What I really like is that they're learning real science all along, and they're totally enjoying it. Have fun! Aurora

What sort of things is he interested in? Can you angle it from a different viewpoint to engage him better?

Hi there, I am giving a free Astronomy class as a holiday gift to homeschool parents. I am a science teacher, and I thought this would be a fun way to keep the kids' brains going over winter break, and since evening falls early near winter solstice, this is a fun (albeit unusual) way to enjoy the season. This is the same stuff I teach in front of gobs of students. We'll take an in-depth look at the planets, moons, comets, asteroids, and stars as we rocket through the cosmos. It's basically like getting a front-row seat to a planetarium-style astronomy show. And you can have grandma, uncle Bob, and the goldfish next door be a part of the call (just put me on speakerphone). The best part is: NO MATERIALS REQUIRED. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. :) All you need is a computer and a phone (which I assume you have if you're reading this). Tuesday, December 22nd 2009 at 5pm Pacific Time The class is free, taught by a real scientist, and there's no prep for it... but a bowl of popcorn is always a plus. Oh, and I'll be presenting this in a non-evolution, non-creation way to everyone can participate. Thanks for your kind consideration, and enjoy your family! Aurora

Here's a quick and easy science experiment you can add to your current Apologia curriculum (Modules 9 & 10) that I use when I teach physics at the university - all you need is chalk (or tape), a ball, a stopwatch, and a driveway. Here’s what you do: 1. Make a starting line at the top of the driveway. 2. Start the timer and then stop the ball in place when the timer reads one second. Make a mark at this ball position (using chalk or tape). 3.Start the ball at the start line again, this time stopping it at 2 seconds and making a mark. Do this again for three seconds, four seconds, etc. 4. Continue this marking procedure until you run out of driveway. Take a good look at your marks. Do you notice how they get further apart the as the ball moves down the driveway? This is a visual representation of what 'acceleration' really looks like. Would it have mattered how big or heavy of a ball you use? Since gravity accelerates all things equally, it wouldn't matter how heavy the ball is (that's what Galileo figured out by dropping objects off balconies), but because of inertia (Newton's First Law), it would matter how large the ball was (you'd probably see a difference between a marble and a soccer ball). For high school kids, you can have them take data using a notebook and measure the distances as they go along and compare them with calculations of what they expected to happen... just like a real scientist does! :)

Yes, you're right - there's a lot of teacher involvement for grades K-2, but here's something you can give the little ones right now without too much fuss... it's an excerpt from a science manual I wrote: Imagine you’re a painter. What three colors do you need to make up any color in the universe? (You should be thinking: red, yellow, and blue.) Hand your kids those three colors in watercolor or paint and show them how they make different colors of the rainbow. You can make green from blue and yellow, etc. Here’s the tricky question - can you make the color “yellow†with only red, green, and blue as your color palette? If you're a scientist, it's not a problem. But if you're an artist, you're in trouble already. The key is that we would be mixing light, not paint. Mixing the three primary colors of light gives white light. If you took three light bulbs (red, green, and blue) and shined them on the ceiling, you'd see white. And if you could magically un-mix the white colors, you'd get the rainbow (which is exactly what prisms do.) If you're thinking yellow should be a primary color - it is a primary color, but only in the artist's world. Yellow paint is a primary color for painters, but yellow light is actually made from red and green light. (Easy way to remember this: think of Christmas colors – red and green merge to make the yellow star on top of the tree.) Find three flashlights. Cover each with colored cellophane (color filters) or paint the plastic lens cover with nail polish (red, green, and blue). Shine onto a white ceiling or wall, overlap the colors and make new colors. Leave the flashlights on, line them up on a table, turn off the lights, and dance - you will be making rainbow shadows on the wall! (In addition, you can paint the lens of a fourth flashlight yellow to see what happens when you substitute it for the green light.) When you combine red and green light, you will get yellow light (the wall you shine the light on will appear yellow). Wave your hand in front of the lights and you will see cyan and magenta shadows. Which lights will give you a yellow shadow? Notes: This experiment has a few things to be aware of. If you’re not getting the colored shadows, check to be sure that the flashlight is bright enough to illuminate a wall in the dark. Be sure to shut the doors, shades, windows, and drapes. In the dark, when you shine your red flashlight on the wall, the wall should glow red. Beware of using off-color nail polish – make sure it’s really red, not pink. If you still need help making this experiment work, you can visit your local hardware store and find three flood lamp holders (the cheap clamp-style ones made from aluminum work well – you’ll need three) and screw in colored “party lights†(make one red, one green, and one blue), which are colored incandescent bulbs. These will provide a lot more light! You can also add a fourth yellow light to further illustrate how yellow light isn’t a primary color. Try using only red, yellow, and blue… you’ll quickly find that you can’t obtain all the colors as you could with the original red-green-blue lights. Happy Experimenting! :party:

You're right - my booth was SWAMPED at the homeschool conventions. I think it had something to do with having live indoor rocket shows and setting up our booth like a science museum. :) Here's something you can do with your kids today and score a few 'parent points'... stick a naked bar of ivory soap in the microwave (on a plate) for about 2 minutes. (Note - you can still use the ivory soap AND the microwave when you're done...) Enjoy! Aurora