Laura Johnson

****plastic test tubes and child-friendly chemicals to mix in them
My five year old has expressed an interest in a chemistry kit that he could experiment by himself. What are some safe things I could give him that he could experiment with? He wants to just mix stuff together to see what happens. We've done the baking soda thing, any other ideas? I want to give him some things that would have a neat reaction, but I never took chemistry.
Laura J

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 9/21/2004 8:20:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
lauraj2@... writes:

My five year old has expressed an interest in a chemistry kit that he could
experiment by himself. What are some safe things I could give him that he
could experiment with? He wants to just mix stuff together to see what
happens. We've done the baking soda thing, any other ideas? I want to give him
some things that would have a neat reaction, but I never took chemistry.<<<<

Do you know about Robert Krampf's Experiment of the Week? He e-mails you one
every Monday. His subscription info is at the bottom of every e-mail.

Here's his post for this week:

Robert Krampf's Experiment of the Week

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

This Week's Experiment - #393 - Frozen Bowl

Greetings from my home at the beach. My surgery went wonderfully, and I am
quickly recovering. Even with no medication, I am not having any acid
reflux. I am taking walks on the beach to regain my strength, and eating
lots of
very small, soft meals as I wait for my stomach to recover.

This week's experiment is a result of those small meals. Searching for
variety and taste, I dug out the snow cone machine. To prepare for my
recovery
time, I bought some paper bowls to eat from; in case I did not feel well
enough
to wash dishes. I grated the ice into a paper bowl and poured on some of
the sweet flavored syrup. The phone rang, so I placed the bowl on the
counter.
When I finished with the call, the bowl was frozen to the counter top.
Why? To find out, you will need:

2 or more paper bowls
crushed ice
salt

The paper bowl has a flat bottom, so it is directly in contact with the
table
top. It is also thin, which lets heat pass through fairly quickly, and the
paper lets a tiny bit of water soak through as well. Put crushed ice
into
two bowls. Place one on the table. Add about 4 spoons of salt to the
other
and give it a quick stir. Place it on the table beside the first. If you
are not using paper bowls, put a drop or two of water on the table
underneath
each bowl.

Now wait for two or three minutes. Then try to move each bowl. The bowl
which only contains ice will move easily, but the bowl with ice and salt
should
be frozen to the table. Why?

The salt lowers the freezing point of the ice. The part of the ice that is
in contact with the salt will change from solid ice into liquid water. The
salt is not melting the ice by adding heat. You are just changing the
point
where it will remain a solid.

To make the change from solid to liquid, the water needs energy. As the
ice
melts, it pulls heat energy from its surroundings, making the liquid water
even colder. You now have liquid water which is colder than water's
normal
freezing point. It pulls heat energy from the air, from the bowl, from the
table, and from any water that is between the bowl and the table. That
water
does not contain salt, so it will freeze at the normal freezing point,
freezing
the bowl to the table.

That is why you add salt to the ice in a home ice cream freezer. The salt
gives you water cooled beyond its normal freezing point. The cools the ice
cream mixture enough to cause it to freeze.

But wait! I did not add any salt to my snow cone. I added sugar syrup.

Sugar will also lower the freezing point of ice, but not as much as salt.
That is why we used salt for our experiment. You can try it again with
sugar
or sugar syrup. You will probably not get results that are as dramatic,
but
they will taste much better. I am particularly fond of the lime flavored
syrup, but the grape is good too.

Have a wonder filled week.

****************************************
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to friends, print it in your newsletter, repost it on the Internet, etc., as
long as you do not charge for them and my name and e-mail address are
included.

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***************************
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My calendar is now on-line. You can see a detailed calendar, with dates,
times, schools, etc. at http://www.krampf.com/mainsubjectsfolder/m_tour.html

***************
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From Robert Krampf's Science Education Company
PO Box 60982
Jacksonville, FL 32236-0982
904-388-6381





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Pam Genant

--- In [email protected], "Laura Johnson"
<lauraj2@v...> wrote:
> We've done the baking soda thing, any other ideas? I want to give
him some things that would have a neat reaction, but I never took
chemistry.
> Laura J
>
Usborne has a little book called Chemistry Experiments, Safe
Experiments to do at Home.

My boys love to mix things together and see what happens also, and
like you, we do the baking soda and vinegar all the time. This
little book has some neat little experiments in it. Things you can
mix together. One thing we did from the book recently was took a
purple cabbage and chopped it up and pour boiling water over it and
let it sit for 1/2 hour. You end up with purple water but can use
this purple water to test things as acid or base. My boys just loved
pouring different things into little cups of the purple water and
watching what happened. If it turns pink it is an acid, blue or
green and it is base. That was cool watching the colors change as
you add lemon juice, or baking soda.

Pam G

catherine aceto

Lydia doesn't eat non-food items (at nearly 7) -- while I think of all of these things as safe, I wouldn't give rubbing alcohol to someone who might taste it. This is all stuff that she likes to mix together just to see what happens. She was enormously pleased with herself, for example, the day that she discovered that oil and colored water in her test tube would make something sort of like a wave bottle, or a lava lamp.

She has a large supply of plastic test tubes and plastic pipettes and test tube stands and some recycled glass and plastic jars to mix and play in.

In Lydia's science "kit" she has little baby food jars filled with things from the house and kitchen: sand, cornmeal, flour, cornstarch, baking soda, baking powder (fizzes in water, since it has a dry acid already in it), vinegar, antacids (she is past the stage of eating things like this), vitamin C, fruit fresh (a combination of dry acids), cocoa, sugar, salt, rock salt, oil in different colors (i.e. xvirgin olive oil is greenish, canola more yellow, etc.), rubbing alcohol, coarse glitter, fine glitter, borax solution, glue, tub tints (little dry pellets of color sold for use in playing in the bathtub), liquid watercolors, and probably some other things I'm not thinking of. Oh, yeah, some packets of dry cool-aid in different colors. I'm thinking of getting different colors of lamp oil, but haven't yet.

She has little baby food jars filled with other things purchased from a kid's science supply house: fake snow (superabsorbent polymer), the kind of superabsorbant powder that they put into baby diapers, a kind of superabsorbant powder that turns into little gelly "crystals," glow - in - the dark powder, magic sand (stays dry in water).

She also has kid-sized plastic eye protectors that she wears for the dress-up pretend factor of being a chemist when she plays with her stuff. I am planning to make her a kid-sized lab coat with her name on the pocket, but haven't done it yet.

As I said, she just likes to play around and see what happens -- but here are a few combinations that definitely "do" something: slime (borax solution and glue), fizzy bath bombs (oil, baking soda, and Kool-aid mixed together and formed into a small ball - fizzes and releases oil and sent when dropped into a bath); cornstarch and water turns into a weird substance that seems liquid until you push on it and then it seems solid. If you put plain whole milk in a shallow saucer and drop little bits of watercolor or foodcolor in, the colors will mostly stay in place -- touch the center with a toothpick dipped in dishwashing liquid and the colors will instantly begin to mix and swirl.

I second someone's suggestion of the Kampf experiment of the week -- it's great.

We get some of our stuff from www.stevesspanglerscience.com. Lydia sometimes likes to keep her concotions in test tubes, rather than rinsing them out to start over, so we get them in bulk - they're about 40cents each, when you buy them 120 at at time.

Hope some of this is helpful.

-Cat

From: Laura Johnson
To: [email protected]
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 7:35 PM
Subject: [UnschoolingDiscussion] making a chemistry kit


****plastic test tubes and child-friendly chemicals to mix in them
My five year old has expressed an interest in a chemistry kit that he could experiment by himself. What are some safe things I could give him that he could experiment with? He wants to just mix stuff together to see what happens.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

soggyboysmom

--- In [email protected], kbcdlovejo@a... wrote:
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
> This Week's Experiment - #393 - Frozen Bowl

Had to LOL at that one - when DH was in college, we'd eat at the
cafeteria most of the time (as a university employee I got a free
meal plan and DH's was half price). He and his cohorts had a great
time using exactly this principle to stick a bunch of ice cubes to
the cafeteria trays before putting them on the conveyor to go to the
dishwashers. And they were college kids! (except DH who wasn't a kid
chronologically at that point - he was about 27 when he started
college as a freshman - but is always a kid at heart).

catherine aceto

A couple of other fun things we have done with cabbage indicator and acids and bases: if you soak paper in the purple juice and let it dry, you can paint on it with different acids and bases, using q-tips. If you write on a piece of paper with bakingsoda mixed with water -- it dries to a (mostly) invisible secret message, that you can reveal by spraying lightly with cabbage juice water in a spray bottle.

-Cat
----
One thing we did from the book recently was took a
purple cabbage and chopped it up and pour boiling water over it and
let it sit for 1/2 hour. You end up with purple water but can use
this purple water to test things as acid or base.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

Holly had a lab out in the yard a couple of years ago. We put up two sheets
sewn together, between trees and next to a wall, and she had a metal cabinet,
a wicker bathroom cabinet found near a dumpster, and a little table. We got
little bottles and corks and droppers and pill bottles, and she soaked yard
stuff in various combinations of stuff. She played there a little a year ago,
and none last year. She still sometimes mixes things in jars to see them
swirl. Glitter helps. <g>

Sandra

diana jenner

This is not a *making one* suggestion, but Hayden owns a really cool kit
called "Bubbleology" by Hands-on Science (see www.innovativekids.com) we got
it at the cool toy store for $20. There are cool things he could figure out
on his own at age 5 and a pre-reader; he sometimes asks his sister to read
for him and they have done experiments together... lots of fun :)

~diana :)

> In a message dated 9/21/2004 8:20:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> lauraj2@... writes:
>
> My five year old has expressed an interest in a chemistry kit that he
could
> experiment by himself. What are some safe things I could give him that
he
> could experiment with? He wants to just mix stuff together to see what
> happens. We've done the baking soda thing, any other ideas? I want to
give him
> some things that would have a neat reaction, but I never took
chemistry.<<<<


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Crystal

What about chemistry for older kids? Has anyone's teens done
chemistry and what did they do/use?

Crystal

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lars Hedbor

Another good resource for lab-type stuff is one of my favorite time
and money sinks, American Science & Surplus (http://www.sciplus.com).
They have all sorts of odds & ends, and they cheerfully admit that
much of it is of low quality -- but then, the prices are pretty darned
low, too.

Of course, they also have some good quality stuff, too, particularly
in the labware department. If you're looking for Pyrex-equivalent lab
glassware, they have a pretty full line, as well as things like test
stands, scales, alcohol burners, and the like.

Most of this is stuff that will mainly appeal to the older unschooler
who's taken an interest in chemistry, but the other departments have
tons of stuff that you may also find piques someone's interest...

- Lars Hedbor
Oregon City, Oregon


On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 15:19:05 -0500, diana jenner
<hahamommy@...> wrote:
>
> This is not a *making one* suggestion, but Hayden owns a really cool kit
> called "Bubbleology" by Hands-on Science (see www.innovativekids.com) we got
> it at the cool toy store for $20. There are cool things he could figure out
> on his own at age 5 and a pre-reader; he sometimes asks his sister to read
> for him and they have done experiments together... lots of fun :)
>
> ~diana :)
>
> > In a message dated 9/21/2004 8:20:29 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> > lauraj2@... writes:
> >
> > My five year old has expressed an interest in a chemistry kit that he
> could
> > experiment by himself. What are some safe things I could give him that
> he
> > could experiment with? He wants to just mix stuff together to see what
> > happens. We've done the baking soda thing, any other ideas? I want to
> give him
> > some things that would have a neat reaction, but I never took
> chemistry.<<<<
>
>
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