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...

Solar Eclipse today

Hope lot of you got to see the Solar eclipse today.  Although it wasn't a Total eclipse here in Northern California, it was still very cool to see.  Since we cant see it directly  through our eyes, we need a little help to be able to actually see the eclipse.  When I was a kid, we watched one with two tiny holes in a cardboard.  But this time, we got a Welders helmet (with a solar panel to power up the dimmer) and watching the eclipse through it was really cool.

I took this picture with a macro lens looking through the welders helmet.  The first one was probably 6-8 minutes before the total eclipse and the next one is almost around the time.

Did you know that where you experience Total eclipse, the temperature might drop almost 20degrees!

Happy Pi day..

Probably not the most celebrated holiday but I think its cool to be able to celebrate it on march 14 which is 3.14 which is how Pi starts off..  I think this celebration is started by Exploratorium (my most favorite science museum in the world) 24years ago.  And I think it also coincides with Einstein's birthday too!!! who ofcourse is even on our logo:)

Here's a fun experiment I came across last year and an easy way to teach children the relationship between the diameter and circumference and Pi (ofcourse).

Take any circular object and carefully wrap a string around the circumference of the object.  Cut the string to exactly the length around the object. Now the string is exactly equal to the circumference of the object.  Take this string and stretch it across the diameter of the circular object. Cut the string to the length equal to one diameter.  Repeat the procedure again. How many diameters could you cut? 

Now try with another circular object.  What do you observe?
 
No matter what size circle you use, you’ll be able to cut 3 complete diameters and have a small bit of string left over. And the string left over is the length on the other side of the Pi.  (3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288.....).

Have a fun Pi day
Sheela

Another successful science fair....in the words of parents

Last friday, I held another Science Fair in our son's Kindergarten class.  Took about 10 exhibits of various sizes including bubble one, chinese spouting bowl (my personal favorite), a couple of magnetic exhibits, earthquake table exhibit....  The children were excited and liked almost all the exhibit, different kids liking different exhibits.

I asked the parents to give me some feedback which ones they liked, what they liked and didnt like about Science Fair.  Slowly I am beginning to gather feedback and so far, it has been very positive.  Wish I could have taken some pictures to capture those emotions but am really happy to hear kids remembered and gave such a positive feedback to parents.

Answer to the last question is - Hot water freezes faster than room temperature water with everything else being the same (same type of container, same freezing conditions etc.  Its called Mpemba effect named after a high school student in Tanzania.... Ofcourse you might not see the same effect if say you put hot water in one and really cold water in another as the temperature difference between really cold water and freezing point might be too little for Mpemba effect to occur.

Another experiment/question coming soon....
Have a great Science week

Hot water or cold water

Question I have been asking quite a few people in the last few days - If you have two bowls, one with hot water and another with room temperature (or colder) water, which one will freeze faster....Not a trick question...

Try it at home and let me know.... ask your friends and have fun with it...

Have a happy science sunday everyone