39/54 Walking on Eggshells

  With this experiment, I got myself into a messy situation. My mom got a box of eggs that we could barely fit in the fridge!

I opened the box and went through all of the eggs and picked out the cracked/broken ones.

I pulled out the trays and laid them all out. I never seen so many eggs in one place before!! They were everywhere. After some thinking and reading, I cut some of the cartons and set them on the floor.

 

But first, I grabbed one egg for a smaller experiment. Holding it in my hand, I evenly distributed the pressure on the egg and stared squeezing.

 

I gently started to increase the pressure, hoping the egg won’t explode! But I kept squeezing harder and harder until I realized I couldn’t crush it!!

I squeezed as hard as I could and it would not even crack! Really interesting.

Now for the main event! It’s time that I attempt to walk on raw eggs! Exciting!!! With Christopher helping me I started to step on the first dozen.

 
In that picture it looks like I am freaking out but I am not. As I was stepping onto the eggs, they creaked against the carton and it made me nervous. That’s my “Oh dear. OH NO!” face. But I got one foot on one carton and then the other. And….

Oh yeah!! I did it!!! But as I was enjoying the satisfaction, I lost my concentration and (all relatives of the egg may want to look away now) …….

Eww! By losing my concentration, I didn’t distribute my weight on the eggs. Thus, I put more weight on one egg than the others and a kind of domino effect happened. It was COLD! One of the most interesting feelings in the world, raw egg and egg shell oozing between your toes. I cleaned up and decided to try it again! The second time went a lot better.  There were some messes though.

 

I could feel the eggs crushing under my feet as I walked from one dozen to the other. They held together! Most of them did anyway. But I made it to the end with most of the eggs intact!

I DID IT(The brother photo bombed me)!!! But it was not without sacrifice.

The carnage! That one square is where I lost my balance but it did not stop me!

The important thing is, most of them did not break under my weight. Why? It’s the shape of the egg. When pressured in the right places, it is one of the strongest shapes! The round shape distributes the weight quite well so it can hold a lot. You can go look up more on the shape of the egg!

The WOW-rating for this one is a 6 and a 1/2 Loved it! Really messy though. I had to mop and vacuum (lots of disinfecting)! Now the question is……. what do we do with all of these eggs?

38/54 Colorful Convention Currents

This experiment made my mother nervous. It was short but I learned something I never knew about. I had four identical glasses and filled two with cold (blue water and the other two with warm (yellow) water.

I started off by picking up one of the warm water bottles and place an old playing card on top. I inverted it and attempted to place the warm water on top of the cold one.

I had to carefully put the bottle on top and align the tops of the bottles to each other. Then I carefully removed the card.

There was some spilling but it was a success. Look at this!

  

The water is staying separate! WHY?? We will get to that later. With the other two bottles I did the opposite. I put the cold bottle on top of the warm bottle and the first time I made a mess!

I cleaned up and reset! The second time I succeeded!!

The colors are mixing!! Why is it mixing this time? Well hot water is lighter than cold water. So when the warm water was on top it stayed there because it was lighter. In the second one, the cold water was on top so since it was heavier than the warm water it switched places and the colors mixed! Cool! I never knew that warm water was lighter than cold water.

The WOW-rating for this one is a 4. A little under let’s do it again. This one was fun in a colorful way!

37/54 Bouncing Smoke Bubbles

We have another dry ice experiment! YAY! After I put together my simple equipment, I filled the jar with a couple of inches of warm water. I put a block of dry ice in the jar and that familiar wonderful reaction took place!

 

Attached to the jar was a rubber tube where the smoke escapes. I placed the lid on top of the jar and……..

the smoke traveled through the tube! I dipped the end into a bubble solution and let the smoke travel through the tube. Look at what happened…..

The bubble is filling up with the smoke!

Why isn’t it popping on the towel? The reason bubbles pop on your hand or other surfaces is because of the oils.  Towels don’t have oils so they don’t pop! Check this out!

 

 

With knit gloves on, I could hold and bounce the bubble around! It was great! It is also amazing when the bubble does pop! It looks like a ghost  disappearing.. hence their nickname- Boo Bubbles. 

We played with this amazing “toy” until the block disappeared in the jar. With the left over dry ice.. we made carbonated drinks.

The WOW-rating is an 8! Loved it so much! Dry ice has never failed to amuse anyone.

36/54 Pop Your Top

This experiment was exciting! We took more of a scientific approach to this one too. Which isn’t a bad thing! I do not know about you but I love scientific data!! It makes everything so organized and I learn a lot more by writing it down.

With this experiment I have Alka-Seltzer tablets, water, and film canisters. First, I need to know how long it takes for a 1/4 of a tablet to dissolve in water in the canister. I put a 1/4 of a tablet in the canister and it did what Alka-Seltzer does, FIZZ!

I timed how long it took for the tablet to dissolve completely. I timed it three times and calculated the average, which was 52.19 seconds.

What is the next step? I did the same thing but I snapped on the lid to the film canister.

Imagining using my ninja skills, I plopped the partial tablet in and quickly snapped on the lid.

 

I started the timer, stepped back, and……

OOPS! Almost forgot to put on my shnazzy safety glasses!

What do you think will happen? I will tell you right now for the sake of understanding. The lid is supposed to pop off and fly into the air! But…. The first round didn’t blow up! I waited for a little while to see if it would blow… it refused. So, cautiously touch the canister.

 

But no cigar. With no other choice, I picked up the canister (pointing it away from me and others) and opened it carefully in the sink. I, next, reset the experiment. The next ones worked fine! I put the tablet in and it would give out a big POP and the lid would fly so high it hit the ceiling. It was so loud it made me jump!

You can even see the little drops of water flying!

So, why didn’t it work at first? There are a few variables to consider. I may have not put the lid on fast enough, the lid could’ve not been on right, and the tablet might have been smaller than the others. There are a few things that could have affected the results! The important thing, however, I was able to get the average of the exploding tests. The average was 35.51 seconds compared to 52.19 seconds earlier.

What is making this canister explode?  We saw that the tablet fizzes when it comes in contact with water. What is that fizzing? It is the reaction between the chemicals in the tablet and the water and they are making carbon dioxide bubbles! The carbon dioxide builds inside the canister and the pressure gets so great that the top just pops off! It explains why the time was shorter with the canisters with the lids than the canisters without lids. The lid closed the gap where the air could escape and it instead built up until it couldn’t contain it any longer! It popped before the tablet could completely dissolve

Let’s make a rocket out of this! I made it out of construction paper around one of my canisters. I build it so that the lid is on the bottom of the rocket.

  

I go outside to launch a rocket fueled by Alka-Seltzer! I set it up and wait for the canister to blow. And surely enough……..

You can see the trail of fizz follow the rocket all the way up to the corner. I also love the splat on the table!

This launching Alka-seltzer canisters is fun and addicting! The WOW-rating is a 7- Lets do this over and over and over!!! I did that too! I sat in the hall way for about ten or fifteen minutes launching these things. Trying to see how high I could get them to go. Would the amount of water make a difference? The amount of Alka-Seltzer? You know, sciencey stuff!

I encourage you to find the experiment procedure and try it yourself! Ask yourself all kinds of questions. Discover! 

35/54 Money in a Blender—A Cash Smoothie

We are now beginning our next chapter in Steve Spangler’s book, Kitchen Chaos! Sounds fun right? I thought so. The first experiment in this chapter gave me a shock! But I learned a lot. I needed a dollar bill to begin with, but I opened my wallet to find zero one dollar bills. Mom let me use one of her’s! Ha ha, she’s awesome! Anyway, I grabbed the strongest magnet we have. It’s the same one I used for the “Iron for Breakfast” cereal experiment. In the procedure, Mr. Spangler told me to try to attract the dollar bill with the magnet! I was thinking “Whaa?” but I was too curious not to try it.

The money was attracted to the magnet!!!! I was so surprised. But the question is why? We all know what is attracted to a magnet, metal! Metal in a dollar bill? Could it be true?

To find out, I pulled out the blender and added some water and the dollar bill.

 

You can probably guess what comes next, money smoothie!!

 

After much blending, ripping, chopping, and spinning, the concoction was done and I poured it into a bag.

I did basically the same thing I did in the cereal experiment. I held the magnet in my hand, put the bag on top, and swirled it around. After a minute, I flipped the bag over and looked under the magnet.

YES! Metal in money (iron to be specific)! I never knew that. Apparently, the iron is in the ink and that’s how machines tell if the money is real or not!

The WOW-rating for this one is a 6—Let’s do it again! Honestly, I want to sit at work and have a magnet with a dollar bill and move the bill around the table. My coworkers would say, “What in the world?”. That would be fun!