Liquid Nitrogen and ping pong balls

I came back home last night from a intense 3 day workshop for my other passion (art and jewelry) and my husband and son showed me this cool video.   I love liquid nitrogen although I havent done many cool things with it yet.  Its cool to see how you can freeze a banana in it within seconds or make awesome ice cream with it very quickly but this video tops them all.


 Not sure I will try this any time soon but boy wouldn't this be cool one to try...

Made for each other   - experiment using a bottle of liquid nitrogen and 1500 ping-pong balls... Enjoy!

SciFun and Rube Goldberg Competition

SciFun, along with Lumate, Summer University of Tampere and Finn-Brit association are sponsoring the very first Rube Goldberg Competition for High Schools in Tampere.  YAY!

What is Rube Goldberg machine?

Basically Rube Goldberg machine is a contraption overly complex (built deliberately ofcourse) to do a very simple task.  Like the in the example above, it goes through numerous steps which are pretty entertaining indeed, to finally put a little toothpaste on to the brush.

This competition in Tampere is to be done with everyday materials such as cardboard, paperclips, string, straws, maybe some legos, hotwheel tracks or train tracks, balloons, paper cups and plates etc etc...

Just sent out the student guidelines to follow (you know...things like what materials are not allowed even if they are cool - power tools, fire, chemicals etc).  I also came to know that the IB highschool in Tampere is using this competition as their annual "big project" (like the Solar cooker project I worked on 2 years ago)...YaY!.  I know kids are going to have so much fun building them.  Wish I could be there to watch them but I am sure Kaarina is going to send pictures.

I will post as I get updates...

Summer and ....

Hello everyone,  Although I have been silent on the blog all through summer, SciFun wasn't silent.  During our visit to Finland for a month, I gave a science show in the English Playschool, Tampere.  I didnt go prepared from here to give the science show so had to collect all the materials and plan the experiments from a little village named "Lestijarvi".  It was the second after they opened the playschool after summer break but we had a blast.  We made CD hovercraft (my little guy was my helper), made a device to make chicken sounds from a paper cup, ofcourse had to do volcanoes and balloon experiments.

Apart from the children and the teachers, we had three special guests at the show.  One of them is a key person from the new LUMATE organization in the city.  Lumate is organizing science clubs for young children to promote Science.  YAY!.  Ofcourse one of them is my most favorite high-school teacher of all times...Ms.Kaarina from Tampere IB high school.  The third person was from Finn-Brit association Ms. Tarja.  I wished I had half the energy as she had and is full of ideas:)

After the science show, we talked and I presented an idea of having a competition between high schools in Tampere during the Science Week this year and is received very warmly by everyone.  After a few more long-distance discussions, the idea became firm and I just sent details of the competition and all the information required to send out to schools.

Stay tuned for another post with details about it...