Thursday, April 27, 2006

Science "Experiments"?

We've tried TWO science experiments out of a new book that I got from our church library, and BOTH of them have...not really failed, but have not worked as well as the book indicated they would! The book is Simple Science Experiments with Everyday Materials, by Muriel Mandell, and one of the things that is says in the intro is that they work. Well, I'd have to disagree with that statement, but I guess Bear has had fun with them regardless!
Yesterday we did an "experiment" where we put a green marker dot on a piece of papertowel and put the end of it in water. In theory, the water was to soak up the paper towel, erasing the green dot and leaving in its wake blue ink and then yellow ink because, according to the book, "...the colors that make up green - blue and yellow - do not move at the same rate, they separate." Well, we tried this three times with dubious results! The first two times, I think our dot was too big. The third time it worked somewhat, but by that time we were all tired of trying, so the impact was lessened a bit!!
Today, we tried to make 2 dull pennies shiny by putting one in lemon juice and one in vinegar. Well, the pennies came out SOMEWHAT shinier. I had thought that we could compare which made the penny shinier - the lemon or the vinegar....they were both pretty much a bust!
Oh well! Hopefully we'll have better luck with the next one!

2 comments:

Sherri said...

Hi friend,
Try using a coffee filter for the color experiment...it works well. If you put the dot on the coffee filter and them drop little drops of water at a time in the middle of the dot, it will spread out and separate into its colors. It is very interesting to do black because black contains all of the colors.
Dang that book...go get you another one...hahahahaha.
I have a cool one that came from the dollar store...it looks like a coloring book...cheap thing, but the experiements work. The balloon and paperclip ones from my Blog came from that cheap book.
The kids look happy in the picture....I guess they did enjoy it. :) :)

Dy said...

Wow, that book, erm, well... anyhow, try adding salt to the solutions. The results are more impressive to the little ones. ;-)

Dy