Oobleck!

Bartholomew and the Oobleck!

Back in 1949, Dr. Suess wrote a book about crazy stuff falling from the sky in the Kingdom of Didd. This stuff was created by the king's wizards and was stick and gooey and caused all sorts of problems. They called the stuff Oobleck.

Teachers for years have been creating their own versions of Oobleck for use in science classrooms as learners explore the different states/phases of matter.

Our version is simply made by mixing corn starch and water.

The great thing about the mixture is that learners can feel how the substance acts like a solid when they squeeze the molecules together, yet the substance flows freely like a liquid when pressure is released! It really is a lot of fun to play with!

Density Labs - Details

Learners spent over a week working in our STEM labs at the 2-8 building working on finding the mass, volume, and density of various materials.

Below is a summary of a few of the labs:

Reading with a twist

The other day, we spent a little time reading from the book Atoms and Molecules by Spilsbury.

To add a little fun to the activity, we played a little game inspired by a radio show that used to run on 700 WLW. They called it "Sports or Consequences" and folks would call up and try to "Stump the Chump" with trivia questions pertaining to Cincinnati sports history.

If the hosts got the questions correct, they would yell..."We don't, We don't, We don't mess around. Hey!"

Our learners had fun trying to stump their friends with interesting facts from the book!

Disappearing Ball - A demonstration in density

Learners spent a lot of time over the last few weeks exploring and calculating the density of many different things.

This was a small demonstration of density that we did in class...

Mystery Materials - Chemical Reaction

As learners continued to learn about chemical reactions, they took part in a lab in which they were mixing "unkown" materials. As they are beginning to understand, sometimes when you mix different types of materials, a chemical reaction will take place and a new substance will be formed. In this case, the resulting material resembled and acted like a bouncy ball.

Physical vs. Chemical Change - CO2 Extinguisher

As we look at chemical vs. physical changes, we are beginning to explore how to tell the difference.

5 Changes that typically show a chemical reaction:

1. A gas is  formed
2. A new substance is formed
3. Heat and/or light is generated or lost
4. A new smell is formed
5. A dramatic color change occurs.

Below is a demonstration done in class, mixing baking soda and vinegar. The resulting reaction produced Carbon Dioxide which I used to put out candles.

Mystery Mass Rods Lab

As part of our exploration on density, learners used an equal mass rods kit to discover that rods of various volumes can still have the same mass if their densities are different.

Watch two of our learners discover this...