One more trip around the Sun

Now that we've all survived another trip around the sun, and as we embark on another, entitled, 2013, I want to wish everyone a Happy and Awesome New Solar Revolution

Naturally, being a “new year”, I’ve been having long discussions with Littletree about what a year actually means – one trip around the Sun for the Earth, and how different cultures mark the start of each year at different times, and how different calendars calculate such things. And that rabbit hole of research led us, like so many things, to learning about the Sun, and the NASA website…

She pointed out the same thing I remember saying to my mother when I was about her age – what’s the point of calling it a “new” year, when every day starts a new year. And for each person, a new year really starts on their birthday.

Christmas Popcorn

Littletree is pretty excited to be celebrating Christmas this year – she decided to decorate a tree, so we found a fallen branch outside and set it up for her to decorate

We don’t have all that much in the way of decorations, and not much of a budget to buy any, so we took a tip from my lovely friend Gramma Miri (who makes the most amazing custom-made Spirit Hoods) and made Popcorn Garlands to decorate around.

The first step being, of course, making popcorn

But as these things do with Littletree, everything turns to science. She observed the popcorn popping, and wanted to know how it works. YouTube delivered some fine slow motion shots of popcorn popping, which, of course, led us down a slow-motion videos rabbit-hole

But we did eventually make it back to popcorn, and naturally there has to be quality control.

Rigorous scientific testing of every aspect of the popcorn…

Littletree finally stopped eating long enough to actually thread some onto string and make garlands

yay!

And it looks great on the tree

Potatoes are cool

Remember a couple of months ago Littletree got a kit to make a liquid-powered clock… (here)

Well, she’s been experimenting with it, trying all sorts of different things that she can run with cranberry juice, and then trying what other things will run the clock other than juice.

Littletree asked if we could do a potato, and I'm thinking, hey, why waste a perfectly good potato when there's half a lemon already cut open in the fridge. So she tried a lemon, and it works.

She asked again if she could try a potato, and I thought, hey, why waste a perfectly good potato?I said, “why not try an orange - we can cut up an orange into eight segments, and you can use 2/8 for your clock, and eat the rest for a morning snack” (her current favourite morning snack is an orange cut into eights, much of which is eaten while playing around with fractions).

And Littletree said, "yeah, but I want to try a potato". “Why a potato?” I asked.

“Because potatoes are cool, for no reason.”

And incidentally, using zinc and copper electrodes in sequence, they can power a small digital clock.

Faerie Night Light

Littletree’s experiments with chemistry have joined up with her recently-found interest in low-light photography (which we talked about here).

She’s been experimenting with luminescent chemistry, and we’ve been learning a lot about the stuff that goes into glow sticks, and things that glow in UV light, like the quinine in tonic water.

The latest fun thing to do has been making faerie nightlights by breaking up glow sticks and emptying them into jars. The effect is awesome, especially with mixing different colours.

And then Littletree gets to experiment with low-light photography and painting with light.

Crystal Chemistry

Littletree has been dabbling in chemistry lately, as well as a little geology, which is the perfect crossover for her loves of science and crystals.

She was given a selenite tower recently, and she loves the crystal; she finds it to have great powers of protection and to be very calming. AquaCat suggested going on an adventure to the creek with a whole lot of crystals to “cleanse” them in the spring water, of course Littletree jumped at the chance.

They had a lovely walk through the rainforest and up the creek, and set the crystals up to cleanse in the flowing water

Littletree was very careful to set them all up carefully and then set about the important scientific work of playing in the river experimenting with physics.

When she came back to check on the crystals, they discovered that the selenite was all rough, and decided that perhaps it was a crystal not meant to be in water.

As soon as she came home, Littletree was most excited, and we went straight to google to find out about selenite and why it went funny in the water.

Littletree learned that it’s actually a crystalline form of gypsum which is the main ingredient in plaster, and alabaster. Reading one page, Littletree read that gypsum is CaSO₄·2H₂O and she asked me what that means.

So we spent some time learning about the periodic table, elements, the different bonds molecules form, and how they sit in crystalline structures.

She already had a very basic grasp of what elements are, but she was was fascinated with the concept – we talked about how each element has a certain number of electron “arms” – potential bonds where it can connect with other elements. We talked at length about H₂O being water and how it’s a molecule made of an Oxygen atom (which has two “arms”) and two Hydrogen atoms (with one arm each).

Littletree spent some time working out the exact structure of calcium sulphite dihidrate, and was most impressed to work out that selenite is 70% water, which is similar to the amount of water in the human body. She even drew up the chemical structure in her notebook.

We had a long discussion about what effect it would have on the human body if one dissolved selenite into the drinking water, and in fact, I’m still listening to her rabbiting on about how selenite is 70% water and 30% calcium sulphite, and it will just dissolve in water.

Then we had to look up the chemical compositions of all the crystals she has, and then many other things. So now a wall poster of the periodic table has been added to her wish list, and she’s moved on to a new favourite joke which she’s telling everyone:

Two scientists walk in to a bar, and the first one says “Bartender, I’ll have a glass of H₂O” and the second scientist says “I’ll have a glass of H₂O too.” and the second scientist died.

Groan.

Liquid-Powered Clock

We lucked upon some really cheap home science experiment kits at a clearance sale, so Littletree picked out a few that looked interesting, the first one she wanted to do was a liquid-powered clock.

The unboxing is always exciting, especially when things come with safety equipment! Littletree is so big on safety – she even made the cat go outside for this as it says on the safety information “keep small children and animals away from chemicals”.

First step – reading the instructions. Always read the instructions carefully. It amazes me just how well Littletree can read when she wants to, but if anyone asks her arbitrarily to read something, she’ll say “I can’t read”.

So after a careful examination of all the safety warnings and instructions and checking the inventory, she set to work

Assembling all the plastic bits

Wiring it all up (also learning about currents and wiring)

And then the acidic juice needed to start the reaction (mmmm cranberry)

Copper and Zinc plates (which involved a long discussion about copper and zinc and the different properties of various metals)

And voila! A working digital clock, powered by juice.

I’m thinking it wont be long before Littletree is hacking this kit to power all sorts of things.

Painting with light

Littletree has been learning about light – the speed of light, how it travels, waves and rays, which led to all sorts of discussions – tying in her love of astronomy when we talk about how long it takes for the light from stars to get to us, and then we got into photography.

Being a child of the digital age, Littletree has almost no experience with film or manual camera settings, but I studied photography in senior college – even had my own darkroom set up at one point, so we had long talks about shutter speeds and apertures and light.

And even though my camera is a simple compact digital jobbie, it still has manual setting options, so we got to playing with long exposure times and painting with light.

Littletree was instantly captivated

She spent ages experimenting with different long-exposures and different light-sources, and different inspirations.

I suspect these experiments are not yet over, but at last she managed to get the result she was after

Love.

At the heart of science

Since Littletree’s recent foray into dissecting brains was such a success, we decided to get to the heart of the matter, and dissect some hearts.

***again: graphic pics warning, don’t scroll down if you’re squeamish, instead, peruse this old post which includes a very cute picture of Littletree***

So back to the butcher for lamb’s hearts, and out with the science lab equipment!

Littletree was really excited to see all the different chambers in the heart, and how the bigger blood vessels feed in and out of the chambers. We learned about how the valves work and how the muscle pumps.

We got out some medical books and learned about the heart in humans and various genetic disorders, and the whole circulatory system.

And as always, Littletree got out her microscope and made up some slides to look at heart tissue.

Apparently I now need to source bovine eyeballs for dissection. I swear this wasn’t in the brochure when I signed up for parenting.

Braaaains

Littletree’s long fascination with science endures on… she asked me if we can do some dissections for a unit on biology, and somehow tying with the recent fad of Zombies – she asked if we can get some brains.

The last time we were shopping at the local organic butcher, when the butcher asked what we’d like, and Littletree piped up with “Braaaaaaains”. Luckily Unfortunately, the organic butcher’s was out of brains that day…

But Littletree didn’t let up, so the next time I went to the supermarket, I looked in the meat section, but couldn’t find any brains. So I went up to the deli counter and asked the woman, “excuse me, do you have any brains?” She looked at me like I was mad, I quickly realised what I’d said and followed up with, “I mean, I looked over in the meat section where the other organ meats are, I could see livers and kidneys and hearts and stuff, but no brains…”

The woman was still looking at me like I was mad and said they don’t keep them in stock any more. I explained, “My daughter is home schooled – we don’t want to eat them, we want to dissect them for biology studies”. This seemed to endear me to the deli-counter woman, who directed me to try out the butcher across from the supermarket.

Off I went to the butcher… The lad working behind the counter asked me what I’d like and I said:

“Do you have any brains?”

He shook his head and said “Sorry, no one in here’s got any brains!”

Gotta love Aussie humour. When I explained that it was for a home-schooling science project, he was very helpful and found some sheep’s brains out in the back freezer. Littletree was most happy.

***warning*** From this point on, the post contains graphic pictures of a scientific nature (extremely squeamish people may like to instead click through to this post about Littletree acting like an extremely cute cat http://majikfaerie.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/littlecat.html)

***

Littletree eagerly got out her science lab kit, scrubbed up, and set up her equipment, checked a medical text book for tips, and started with the dissection

She was fascinated to see all the quadrants, how it has very clear left and right hemispheres, the lobes and such

Then she decided to make some slides and look at various bits in her microscope

Most importantly, Littletree can see why a brain is called “a noodle”.

Stand Back, I’m about to try Science!

Littletree is quite the science-geek. She’s just always been that way inclined – since she was a wee sproglet she was fascinated with biology and astronomy and physics. At four she used to spend hours pouring over medical dictionaries and watching YouTube clips of surgeries, and she never lost interest (nostalgia post HERE).

So when I saw a school holiday science workshop advertised, with “Extract plant DNA, make polymers, experiment with acid/base reactions” on the bill, I signed her up – she’s always wishing we had more lab equipment…

The set-up looked very cool to me, loads of equipment and chemicals and a scientist teacher in a lab coat.

Littletree got to make some polymers

She learned about DNA and extracted some from kiwi fruit

They made bottle rockets

And for fun did the good old “mentos in coke”, with valves so they could control the flow.

She was really interested to get a bit more technical details, including the chemical formulas and scientific explanations for what they were doing and how it all worked (we took home stacks of notes that she goes over)

But at the end of the day when I asked her what she thought of it, Littletree said “well, it was alright, but way too basic for my level. I already knew all that stuff. Can I go to a class that’s not for little kids?” Ummmm that was a class for 8-12 year olds. Okay, back to the lab…

Faeries on Ice

So, we’re totally getting into skating of all sorts – after my recent foray into Roller Blading with homeschool group, we’ve gone to the roller rink a couple times more, and this week we went ice skating again with the Gold Coast home school group, which is vibrant and thriving.

Remember that Littletree is a long-time ice skating enthusiast, it’s great to see how she’s improving over time, and her confidence and skill level is improving so much. And since I’ve started skating more, I’m getting a whole lot more confident myself

I even got confident enough to teach a few of the absolute beginners in the group, which was great – I made some new friends along with practising skating :)

I even managed to get myself up to a decent speed going backwards, and then turn around to face forwards while still going in the same direction. Which I thought was a pretty great achievement, until I saw the awesome tricks Littletree is pulling off…

And of course we got into discussions about physics, gravity, friction, the laws of motion, and somehow, genetics while skating.