Fordite - rock or ?

Hello everyone!!!!

My name is Fordite . I am also called “Motor Agate”, "Detroit Agate" and possibly many more names.  I look like a rock but I am not a rock … atleast not in the normal definition anyway.  I have an interesting story behind my existence and would love to share that with you.

You see, I don’t have any minerals or metals - precious or otherwise in me.  I don’t have anything that a stone or rock is expected to have except for beautiful colors and patterns.  Who am I? Where do I come from?

Do you remember the cool cars from 1950s or 1960s or even before?  Those beautiful cars made by Ford?  If you don’t know what I am talking about, ask your parents.  I am sure they have a favorite from those years.  When they built cars in those days, they used to spray paint the cars by hand!  Every frame of every car

Spray painting is messy.  Some of the paint used to drip down on to the painting bays and tracks where the frames were painted on.  Over a period of time, more and more layers of paint kept dripping one top of another and getting hardened.  Some of them even got baked in the oven along with the car and got cured.

After a while, this hardened paint becomes an obstruction and had to be scraped out.  They figured out that the easiest way to get it out is by using a chisel.  And seems like some of the chiselers had very artistic views about this hardened coats of paint.  What the auto manufacturers considered being trash, these folks saw it as treasure.  Since it was cured so well, it was easy to cut and each piece looks like a psycadelic Agate.   And that Agate is ME!. 

One of the stories is that when other artists heard about my beautiful patterns, they started coming to the auto plant and offer to cut off the hardened rock and take.  Can you think of a better “RECYCLED ART”? 

It is thought that the paints in those days are mostly enamel so no need to worry about Lead but if someone is working with a rough slab of me, I would still recommend wearing a mask just to make sure.

I am a perfect example of how science of painting lead to beautiful art. 

Auto manufacturers don’t paint the cars in the same method anymore so no more Fordite or any other “ite” possible.  So, if you have one of us with you, enjoy the beautiful colors and patterns.

Story of a Mantis shrimp

What do rainbows, Northern Lights, and my fish, Streaky, have in common? 

Well, for starters, they are all awesome. But actually, I can see all of them because they reflect light into my eye. My eye and yours too, contains millions of light sensitive cells called rods and cones. Rods enable us to see light and motion and cones allow us to see color. Humans have three types of cones: red, green, and blue. The mixture of red, green, and blue allows us to see all of the beautiful colors in the world. Remember my goldfish? He has four cones: red, green, blue, and ultraviolet. The butterfly can see five colors: red, green, blue, and two others that we don’t even have names for. Imagine all of the possible color variations with 5 cones! But, the butterfly isn’t the king of the colors. 

A small animal, a bit bigger than your hand, holds that title. You can find this brightly colored sea creature hiding in rock tunnels or burrowing intricate passageways in the sea bed. Its name is the mantis shrimp.  The mantis shrimp can see not one, not two, but sixteen different colors! Imagine a color that you can’t even imagine. Now do that thirteen more times. That is the world the mantis shrimp lives in. Hold on, all this imagining has made me quite hungry; I’m going to get something to eat.

Ok. I’m back now. When I get hungry, I go to the refrigerator to get something to eat. If I’m feeling adventurous, I make a sandwich. The mantis shrimp doesn’t have that luxury. Like most animals, it has to hunt for its food. But the mantis shrimp doesn’t hunt like most animals. It has two raptor-like arms that are fitted with a club on the end, much like a boxer’s gloves. This shrimp definitely packs a punch. 

When a mantis shrimp strikes, it can hit its prey with 1,500Newtons of force. That is as powerful as the impact from a grand piano dropping from a second story building. The surrounding water bubbles up from the pressure difference. This is calledsupercavitation. These bubbles implode and send out a undersea shockwave that can kill prey even if the shrimp misses with the punch. The water heats up to a higher temperature than theinside of a blast furnace. The force from the imploding bubbles is so strong that it emits little flashes of light in an effect known as sonoluminescence. A punch from a mantis shrimp is powerful enough to break glass. 

If you were to move your hand that fast to punch something, all the bones inside would most definitely crack. But, the mantis shrimp’s arms are so resilient that scientists are studying them for applications in advanced body armor.

The mantis shrimp is an animal of contradictions. It can see the world much more vividly than we can, yet it embraces the darkness. The mantis shrimp is my favorite animal, but I would never dream of putting it in my aquarium.

--- Akhil Surapaneni

Introducing our guest blogger

Hope everyone had a great summer.  As the school is starting, we are getting back into the groove.  apart from writing experiments and sharing science news, we will start having some guest bloggers writing mainly for kids.  I would like to introduce our first guest blogger, Akhil Surapaneni.

I know Akhil since he was 4 yrs old.  He has always been a very advanced and avid reader (he is the youngest kid I know who read Harry Potter).  He is versatile and multi-talented.  He is very self driven and most hardworking student. He is a senior in high school this year and will be contributing articles to this blog.  I love his writing style.  It's like telling a story and perfect to capture kids attention.

Here's what he said when asked about his interests etc.:

 Interests: science, running, basketball, speech and debate. 

 Hobbies: pretty much my school activities. 

 Aspirations: I want to be a doctor. I want to do lab research in college. I want to run a marathon someday.

Welcome to the blog Akhil.  Proud to have you as a guest blogger.

just change the air pressure...

Here's a simple experiment we did today.  Very few simple ingredients needed but the effect is dramatic.

Materials needed:

• Plate
• glass of water
• food color
• candle
• matches
• glass to cover

(a) Mix a few drops of  food coloring to water
(b) Pour the color water into the plate
(c) put the candle in the middle of the plate and light it
(d) put a glass upside down on top of the candle
(e) watch what happens

Balloon kebabs anyone?

Last week we had a few kids most of the week doing hands-on experiments with us.  We had a theme for each day.  The first day was all about balloons....This is one of Sharko's favorite experiments.  Instead of writing the experiment, we decided to write and post a small video of it.

We all love balloons right.  If you have a balloon and a stick (say bbq stick), what can you do to have fun?  Try this at the next birthday party you go to.


Take the balloon and blow it up.  Then tie it so the air doesn't escape.  Tell everyone that you are going to put a stick through the balloon without making it pop.  Then poke the stick from one end to another!!!  Presto!  You have a balloon kebab!.

 If someone says, can you poke a stick on the side of the balloon and not at the ends?  You say, Why Ofcourse I can!.  Then ask someone to give you some tape (clear tape is even better).  Take two pieces of tape and put it on the side of the balloon in the shape of + on both sides.  Then poke the stick from the middle of the two tapes on both sides.  Here's a video to watch how that works.

calories or Calories?

We all talk about calories (Calories) at some point or other...Mostly when it comes to food.  But what is a calorie?  Is there a difference between calorie and a Calorie?  How much energy does it take to lift a 8600lb (3900kg) 6ft into the air?  The answer will surprise you!!

Yes, there are two types of calories which are ofcourse related to each other.  There's 'calories' and then there's 'Calories'.  A calorie is the amount of energy needed to warm 1gm of water by 1degree Celcius (The official definition uses only Metric system). 

A Calorie (with a capital C) is the amount of energy needed to warm 1kg of water by 1 degree Celcius.  So, a Calorie is 1000 times bigger than a calorie.  The term we use for food is always Calorie.  So, if an apple has 80 Calories (even if they write a small 'c'). 

A device thats used to calculate how many Calories any particular food has is called a calorimeter.   A basic calorimeter consists of a thermometer attached to a metal container full of water suspended above a combustion chamber.  To calculate calories for a particular food, they just put the fixed amount of food in the combustion chamber and measure the heat it produces when it burns. Ofcourse there's a bit more to it than just burn the sample of food....eg:  to determine Calories in a chocolate, they have to first determine how much fat is in it and how many carbs are in it etc. 




I was reading an article online that said you need 26 Calories to lift a 8600lb (3900kg) SUV more than 6ft in air!!!  26 Calories is what you get from eating one Hershey's kisses!!!  that's a bit mind-boggling isn't it.  That doesnt mean you should eat a Hershey's kisses and go try to lift a car.

If calories and Calories are not enough, there is yet another term used in measuring energy.  its called a 'joule'.  It is equal to the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one newton through a distance of one meter.  While calories and Calories are used for food, joules is usually used to measure amount of effort requred to do a certain job like lifting a SUV.  1 calories = 4.18 joules.

So, next time you look at the food and see the number of calories (Calories), imagine what all you can do with that much energy if you dont need it to spend on our body functions etc.

Fun with erasable pen, freezer and secrets...

When Sharko found the erasable gel pens in the science box today , we realized we haven't blogged it although we have been doing it for a couple of years now so here it is...

  The erasable pens we used here are 'Pilot Frixion erasable gel pens'. 

•  First take some paper to write
• Then take the erasable gel pen

•  Write whatever you want with the erasable pen on the paper.

• Then erase what you wrote with the eraser on the back of the pen

• Its so easy.  Now you cant see anything you wrote.

 

• Ask your mom or dad if they can get what you wrote back
• When they cant do it, take the paper and put it in the freezer for 10-15 mins
• Bring it out of the freezer 
• Magically whatever you wrote appears!!!  Its that easy...

Experiment done and written by - Sharko


How does this work?

Erasable gel pens are thermo-sensitive meaning their gel ink is heat sensitive.  When you 'erase' with the tip of the pen, the motion of erasing causes friction (maybe thats why they named those pens frixion) which produces heat and 'erase' the color.  The color doesn't get erased as much as it "disappears".  Since opposite of heat is cold, when we put the paper in the freezer, the 'cold' gets back the color.  You can erase it again and again and again:)



To test this theory, I took the paper which came out of the freezer with the drawing and text showing up again and applied heat to it.  I held it against water heater with hot water inside.  And presto! the color disappeared.  Then I put it in the freezer again and it came back to life again...












Happy experimenting...

Abalone..

Abalone is the common name used for a group of edible sea snails (gastropods).  They cling to the walls and wait patiently for a piece of kelp to come to them.  Abalone shells are fascinating.  They are like layers of bricks with protein binding them (like a brick and mortar house).  So, if something heavy falls on the shell, instead of shattering into tiny bits, the bricks slide and the protein in between takes the blunt of the hit.  Pretty cool body armour right!!!!




The shell of an Abalone has a flat spiral and usually oval shaped.  Both the meat and the shell of Abalones are desired albeit for different reasons.  Abalone shell interiors can have very bright colors and are used in jewelry making  as a source of 'mother-of-pearl'.  Like other shell creatures, there is possibility of pearls forming in the Abalone shells as well.

Like most animals, male species of Abalone are more attractive with stripes on the outer edges. 

The one on the left is a male while the one below is a female.

 The Abalones are available in different parts of the world and their meat is considered to be a delicacy (and/or a luxury) in different countries including Chile, South east Asia etc.




White Abalones are already highly endangered and illegal to fish.  Red Abalones might not be that far.  

In US, fishing Red Abalones need both a permit and a card that shows how many Abalones have been caught in a year.  Seems like the limit is set to 3 Abalones per day with a max limit of 24 per year.  Also there is a size limit for fishing them.  Abalones that are picked have to be atleast 7 inches in size.


When we visited the glass beach in Fort Bragg, there was a Abalone Watch group set up to check every diver coming out of the beach who went to pick Abalones.    So the Abalone watch measures every Abalone that is picked and make sure they all fall under the legal limits.  Here's to hoping they dont get to the state of extinction with over hunting.

Sea glass, Ocean, Fire glass....

Do you know what Sea Glass is?

Sea glass is glass that has been thrown into the sea years ago (at Fort Bragg, about 40 years ago).  The pieces of glass got smoothened out by the sea and got polished by the sand.  It eventually comes to the shore and allows people to pick it up. 

-Sharko

We were at Fort Bragg and its known for its beautiful glass beaches.  There are atleast 3 beaches where you find sea glass.  There is one "original" beach that is in MacKerricher state park where its illegal to collect any seaglass.  Just outside the state park, there is another site where there is abundant sea glass.  These pictures are from that second site.  Apparantly there is a third location which is accessible by only kayaks where you can find sea glass.  

The story of Sea glass is quite fascinating.  It also shows how Mother Nature can turn something ugly and unwanted into something we go searching for and consider it precious!

About 40 years ago or so, the ocean and beach in Fort Bragg was used as a dump site to discard, glass, appliances and apparently even cars!.   Sometimes they used to set the garbage on fires to reduce the size of it.  In the later years, there were lot of clean up programs to remove most of the debris but glass pieces stayed.  Nature already started its charm even on the thrown away glass.  The waves and sand together polished and smoothened the glass pieces and now they became nature's treasure again.  There's a tiny clip of water washing over the sea glass at the end of this blog.  Watch it and imagine that happening for 40 years constantly and you will appreciate what Nature can do!!

Sea glass is found almost everywhere there is an ocean (and the glass pieces you find near rivers is called 'beach glass').  In general, red, blue, lavender, purple or pink colored sea glass are rare as there aren't many containers with those colors.  White, Brown and some of the greens are common (sources being beer bottles etc).

And when they had fires (on purpose) like in Fort Bragg, the glass melts and sometimes have inclusions in them before becoming smooth pebbles and they are called 'Fire glass' and is even rarer to find them.





We dont know what affects the dump had on the marine life all those years ago but right now, the Glass beach in Fort Bragg is teeming with life.  We saw lot of tide pools with marine creatures like crabs, purple snails, small fishes and lot more. 

In Sharko's words "A tide pool is a pool that's filled with water caused by tides!  The tides fill the puddle.  Things live there like crabs, fishes and white worms."









Next time you are visiting a beach (ocean or river) that you know was used as a dump site, take a walk and see what shiny treasures you can find....

There's a talk going on in Fort Bragg about replenishing the glass by throwing discarded glass into the ocean.

Here's a small video of how it all happens... 

Spaghettification anyone?

Do you know what spaghettification is?


Say a person gets close to a black hole.  First the legs of the person gets pulled and stretched like a chewing gum when it's pulled.  Then the person starts to look like a long spaghetti noodle as the body  gets closer and closer!!  This is called spaghettification.

Now you can imagine other things like stars and rocket ships getting closer to a black hole and may be draw a few.  Here's one I drew about a person and a star too close to a black hole.  Of course they are not to size really.





- Sharko




What happens here?

Lets define what a black hole in the simplest words.  When a big, I mean really big star (much much bigger than our Sun) runs out of fuel, it shrinks and shrinks in size.  It might even become smaller than the size of an atom but keeps the same mass.  This is called a black hole.  Even light cannot escape a black hole.

When that much mass resides in such a small space, (very very dense right), the gravity still is high and anything that comes close to its boundary (also called Event horizon), it sucks it in and gobbles it up.  Eventually the black hole might increase in size as it gobbles up stars and galaxies.  The more mass it gobbles up, the more gravitational pull it will have. 

So, when a person gets close to a black hole, the gravitational pull is more at the legs than the head and so the legs gets stretched/pulled towards the black hole.  Eventually the whole body gets stretched to make it look like a long noodle and so got its name "Spaghettification".  Atleast who ever named it came up with a fun name right...

-Sheela

Sharko posts...

Usually I do a lot of experiments with our son (nickname Sharko) and as he is growing, we have been expanding our discussions about the experiments and topics.  We thought it might be fun for him to write the blog with a little editorial help from me so kids can relate to them better.  So, we will be posting experiments, snippets of amazing science stuff we sniff around etc...To explain how any particular experiments work or theories behind, I will try to fill in or explain to Sharko who will in turn write it in his own words.....Kid's blog for kids...

We will post videos/pictures of the experiments we do at home as well as cool videos etc from other sources too.  Especially videos like this one that we cannot do where we are and time of the year...

As his first blog experiment, he chose to rewatch the video of what happens to hot water in really cold weather...And now I turn the blog to Sharko...

Today we are going to see what happens when hot water is thrown in cold weather.  For this experiment, cold weather means below Freezing temperature.  For example, -30C is very cold and awesome to do this experiment.  Since we dont live in a cold place, we found a video to show.

Watch this experiment -

When you throw hot water in such cold weather, it freezes before it touches the ground. you see a cloud of snow and not water falling to the ground.

The scientific name for this behaviour is very funny.  Its called Mpemba effect.  warm or hot water freezes much faster than normal water!!.  Isn't it cool?

Tornado in a bottle..

Did you know?

(a) A strong Tornado can pick up a house and move it down a block!!

(b) 3 out of every 4 tornadoes in the world happen in the United States!!

(c)  Tornado winds are the fastest winds on Earth!!


Tornadoes are fascinating works of Mother Nature.   Usually when we talk about Tornadoes, they are caused by Wind.  For a Tornado to form, it needs just the right circumstances including warm air from one side and cool air from the other.  Other names for a Tornado include cyclone, twister...

Tornadoes that form on water bodies are called Water Spouts.  Waterspouts are spiraling funnel-shaped wind current, connecting to a large cloud (cumulus or cumulonimbus).

To see how they look, we dont need to wait for one to happen where we live.  We can create one easily at home.

Materials needed:
Two 2-liter bottles
duct tape
water

Fill one of the bottles with water (about 2/3rds of the bottle).  Place the other bottle nose to nose and tape both the noses together.  Be very generous with the amount of tape used as the tighter the tape can hold, less leakage of water and air and better tornadoes.

Turn the bottle with water upside down.  Swirl the bottle in a round motion causing the water to go in circular motion.  When the water moves fast enough, it pushes out against the bottle (while going down the hole), and leaves an open space in the middle.  The air in the lower bottle flows up through this open center up.  The spinning water holds a steady shape going around the sides. This funnel shape is a tornado in a very small scale.

If you look from above, you can see the hole in the middle where the air is coming up.

Have fun!!

Wire that can remember its past...

 Have you bent a metal wire to a particular shape you want and heat it up slightly only to find the wire goes back to its original shape?  Can you imagine the metals we use everyday doing this?  impossible to have a pan in the shape we want and cook!!!

This wire is amazing... Its called NiTinol wire.  It remembers its original shape and goes back to it when heated up.  Before explaining it all, lets do the experiment first.






Here's a piece of NiTinol wire.  Almost straight in shape right...










Bend it into any shape you want.  Here's the same NiTinol wire bent into a waveform.













Take the piece of wire to a heat source.  Make sure you are holding the wire with some device that will protect your fingers/hand from heat.

You can even use a hairdryer to do this.









Keep watching the wire as it changes the shape quite quickly.

Keep the heat source on till you see the wire almost straight again (the shape we started off with!!!)

And here's the wire at the end of the experiment..isn't it cool...







Yes, ofcourse you can bend the wire and keep it in that shape with a little patience and teaching the wire to remember the new shape too but that's another experiment for another day.


What's happening?

NiTinol is an alloy of Nickel and Titanium.  Unlike other alloys, this one has two different crystalline structures.  One of them called Martensite phase is the structure that the alloy prefers while at low temperature and at high temperature, it prefers the phase called Austenite.  During Martensite phase, the crystal structure is such a way that it can be deformed in any direction.  But when its heated to Austenite phase, the structure reverts back to the original form.

Scaring the pepper away...

For this week's experiment in class, I told the kids we will scare some pepper.  Ofcourse questions like how can you scare pepper as its not live to what can scare pepper came up.  I asked them to try making scary faces to see if they could scare the pepper that way.  I told them they cant blow or move the setup to scare but can try anything else that doesnt involve touching/blowing etc... Although by this time the kids know me enough that they didnt agree that maybe we are doing some magic.

But first, here's the experiment.

Take a plate and pour some water (maybe half a centimeter deep).  Sprinkle some powdered black pepper.  Let it rest for a few seconds.  You see that the pepper floats (yes, a few grains that are big enough might sink to the bottom but most of it should float.  








Take a cotton swab, dip it slightly in dishwashing soap.  Now touch/dip the tip of the swab in the middle of the plate without disturbing too much.  What closely while doing it to see what happens to the pepper...

What's happening?

At the top of the plate, all the water molecules are close together (since there are nothing else above them to stick to) thus forming what we call "Surface Tension". When we introduce soap in the middle of the plate, the soap breaks the surface tension as the water molecules now can stick to the soap molecules as well...And it starts radiating outwards with the water molecules trying to pull from the rim of the plate but there is nothing to pull back from the center....so the pepper gets pulled to the rim of the plate soon.  Now that surface tension is broken, you will also see that the pepper starts sinking down as well.

Can you think of another experiment you can do using the same principle?

Eggsperiment with a twist

So we boiled an egg tonight originally to be part of dinner salad.  While peeling the shell, I was thinking aloud that if only we had a glass milk bottle we could do the experiment of getting the egg into the bottle.  Promptly, my husband reminded me that I did bring a bottle from Finland.

So I got the bottle out and put the egg on the mouth of the bottle and ofcourse the egg wouldnt fit into the mouth and was sitting there pretty.

This is what we did to get the egg into the bottle.

Great!!! Now that the egg is inside, how do we get it outside?...one way is to use baking soda and vinegar but wanted even simpler one.  So, borrowed the idea from our film canister rocket experiment and used Alka-Seltzer tablets instead....

Scientific innovations do not know "age-ism"

Have you read bout Jack Andraka?  He is a regular 15yr old attending school..What makes him not so "regular"?  He is an innovator...He came up with a test for cancers such as Pancreatic, lung and ovarian cancers that costs only pennies and is almost always accurate.  The test can be done from home or anywhere and much faster than the tests that are available today (which cannot be done from home either).

Here's an interview in Forbes on him.  Encouraging him to "figure out" things and experiment to get answers is how he says he got interested in Science....Never fails to play with Science right...

Nano technology and Hydrophobic

I was getting ready to write another experiment in the blog when my hubby dear sent me this video to watch.  Its just so cool that I decided to write about this instead.

Nano technology and Nano science are relatively new fields and there is a lot to learn but are also very fascinating subjects.  To get an idea about the scale of Nano-technology, imagine this:  a single human hair is approximately 80,000 - 100,000 nanometers wide!!!  So, we are talking about how things can be manipulated at that minute scale.

A company called UltraTech came up with a new product called Ultra-Ever Dry..A liquid/spray that can be sprayed on almost any surface (or they claim) and it will repel water, oils, atleast limited number of acids!!!.  Imagine a car coated with this would never need a wash again:)

Here's a cool video of how the product works.  Wish I could get more info as to how it works but ofcourse it would be their secret not to share right...The only info I could find is that the nano-coating relies on a barrier of oxygen/air to form the barrier on the surface of the material it is coating.  Meaning the surface does need to be exposed to air (and so cant be used inside a pipe which is under the ground?).

Here's a video that shows how it works....

Disclaimer:  I am not promoting or advertising for the product....just a cool video showing how nano technology is being put to use for practical uses....

Instant snow...

Unless you live in a place where there is snow all around you right now, wouldn't it be fun to make some snow in the warmth of your home and play with it without it melting away?

This "instant snow" comes in a powder format.  Just add water to it and it almost instantaneously expands upto 100 times its original volume.  It is spectacular to watch it puff up.  It feels like real snow to touch and you can dry it up and make it puff again and again...You can't eat or make snow cones with it unfortunately.

What is "Instant snow"? - Its a super absorbent polymer called sodium polyacrylate.  You find this in baby diapers!!  yes, you can open up the baby diapers (before they are used ofcourse) and get the powder out and use it as instant snow too....  or you can order it from various sites including Amazon and try it out.

Slimey Slime....

Our son joined a new school which has a lot more of parent participation.  I started volunteering in his class.  Working with the class teacher, I am doing more science experiments in class with the kids.  Decided to post the experiments we are doing in class here with the recipes (ofcourse)....

Last week we did Slime.  Something about slime is soo appealing to all kids.  Girls and Boys were equally excited to make it.  Some took it back home to play at leisure, some couldn't wait and played in class. 

Slime is one of the things that are so easy to make that they can make it any number of times and its exciting every single time.

Ingredients to make slime: 

3-4 tablespoons of white school glue (Elmers glue)
a couple of drops of food color

1 tablespoon of Borax powder
Half a cup of water.
a craft stick or a plastic knife to mix

• Mix the Borax powder into half cup of water and stir it.  This is the Borax solution we will use.
• Pour 3-4 tablespoons of glue into a disposable cup or bowl.  You can add a little water if desired.
• Add the food color to the glue and mix
• While mixing the glue, add a few drops of Borax solution.  Keep adding a few drops and mix till the slime forms.  Once all the glue is mixed and formed into a big blog, slime is ready to play.  The more you play the harder it gets..
• Enjoy....