Walking across the field to school the other morning:
Younger offspring: How come the earth is round but when you’re walking on it, it looks flat?
Dr. Free-Ride: The earth is pretty big. We’re so tiny compared to the earth that the curvature isn’t something we notice.
Elder offspring: This field would barely be a speck on even a really big globe.
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah, so it’s not a big enough chunk of globe that you appreciate the roundness.
Younger offspring: OK. And where’s the top?
Elder offspring: Huh?
Younger offspring: Is the North Pole the top of the earth, or is the South Pole really the top?
Category Archives: Kids and science
Friday Sprog Blogging: what we found by the bay.
Last weekend, while I was still in the throes of grading, my better half decided to take the Free-Ride offspring on a hike (or, in the Free-Ride vernacular, a “death march”). The younger Free-Ride offspring reports back on some of the salient details.
Dr. Free-Ride: Can you tell me what you saw on your death march by the bay?
Younger offspring: We saw lots of cool things. One of them was a snake skin. And we saw lots of pickleweed, which we tried.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh, you tasted it?
Younger offspring: Uh huh. I only like the salty bits.
Friday Sprog Blogging: extra-terrestrial life.
Elder offspring: Since soccer season is over, you should take us someplace fun on Saturday.
Dr. Free-Ride: Well, Saturday morning I’ll be at commencement, and I think I’ll need to spend at least part of Saturday afternoon grading.
Younger offspring: Aww, do you have to go to commencement?
Dr. Free-Ride: Yes, I have to. This year I’m a commencement marshal.
Younger offspring: A commencement Martian?! Oh no!
Elder offspring: Do you get to carry a ray-gun?
Friday Sprog Blogging: pond water.
The elder Free-Ride offspring got to go on a field trip this week to an area lagoon. The high points of the visit included seeing a Steller’s Jay (we more frequently encounter scrub jays), looking at a possum skull, and being pointed in the direction of the turkey vultures who were eating the rest of that particular possum.
But the favorite part of the field trip was the visit to the laboratory (which I’m guessing might have been air conditioned) to look under the microscope at some pond water.
Friday Sprog Blogging: can we dissolve an avocado?
As promised last Friday, today we report the results of our investigation of the solubility properties of an avocado. To get the disappointment out of the way up front, we will not be reporting Ks.p. values.
Since we had some around, we decided to use conical tubes to hold the avocado pieces and the experimental solvents. I didn’t want to mark the tubes with Sharpies (because we’ll probably re-use them) and we don’t have the cool colored tape you find in biochemistry labs, so we used a system of plastic cups to keep clear on which tube held which solvent. (The cups also served as our test-tube rack.)
Pop quiz.
Captivated by the colors I saw, I took this picture today.
Any guesses as to what it is?
Friday Sprog Blogging: experimental results (milk + lemon juice).
This Friday we’re reporting on one of the experiments we were looking forward to last Friday, the one in which milk is curdled. (We’ll report on our experimental attempts to dissolve an avocado next Friday.)
We started with a little over a cup and a half of whole milk, on the cold side (since it was in the fridge until we were ready to start experimenting). Since we don’t have glass stirring rods at home, we decided to use a plastic chopstick to do the stirring.
As a control, before we started adding lemon juice, we put the chopstick in the cup of milk. The presence of the chopstick had no observable effect on the milk. We stirred the milk with the chopstick for awhile. This kicked up some bubbles in the milk, but when we stopped stirring and let the milk sit for a few moments, the bubbles went away.
We concluded that the chopstick itself doesn’t curdle milk.
Then it was time to bring on the lemon juice.
Friday Sprog Blogging: weekend experimentation.
Elder offspring: [Dr. Free-Ride’s better half] said we’re going to do some experiments this weekend.
Dr. Free-Ride: Oh really? Do you know what the experiments will be, or are you going to make them up as you go?
Younger offspring: One of them will be making milk curdle.
Elder offspring: With vinegar or lemon juice, I think.
Dr. Free-Ride: Ah, that’s a classic.
Younger offspring: We’re going to curdle the milk before lunch. That will make cottage cheese, which we can eat for lunch.
Dr. Free-Ride: Clever! What else will you be doing?
Younger offspring: I can’t remember.
Elder offspring: Maybe we’ll make [younger offspring] a zombie.
Dr. Free-Ride: You know my rule: No zombies in the house!
Younger offspring: Awww …
Friday Sprog Blogging: book review of ‘Tentacles! Tales of the Giant Squid’.
The foreshadowing last week was accurate. This week, we offer a review of Tentacles! Tales of the Giant Squid by Shirley Raye Redmond with illustrations by Bryn Barnard.
Younger offspring: We should talk about my new squid book for the Friday Sprog Blog.
Dr. Free-Ride: OK. What do you like about this book?
Younger offspring: (Gazing at the cover) I like the cute face of the giant squid.
Dr. Free-Ride: You think that’s a cute face, huh?
Friday Sprog Cephalopod
Sometimes a kid grabs the colored pencils and ends up with a picture of an octopus.
Judging by its color, the octopus is not angry.
This unsolicited picture may be foreshadowing. Younger offspring recently got a chapter book about giant squids and may be working up to dictating a review of it. Maybe next Friday.