Science 101

On Furlough Friday (Jan 15) Sterling and I took the kids to Bishop's Museum. It is a cool place. There is a planitarium, a volcano education center, and a whole building dedicated to Hawaiian history.

Daniel, never a dull moment when he is around! He can't just run down the lava slide.. he is completely animated!

Sophia coming down the "Lava Slide"

James and Sophia trying to actually slide on it.

In the Volcano education building during the "show" they had a display of an eruption. They used Seltzer water and mentos and in the gift shop they sold the little contraption so we could do it too. Grandma Packer had already sent us some Mentos in our Christmas Science Box so we had all we needed.

This picture is during the "Lava Show". After the soda eruption she showed us actual lava. Here she is melting lava to over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit then she poured it into a flat bucket type thing and it cooled almost instantly to 500 degrees forming "volcanic glass". It was pretty cool.

On Saturday the kids were ready to see their own explosion.

It fuzzed... but no real explosion.

I think we would have gotten a better explosion if we just let James shake it up and take the lid off.

I didn't realize that it needed the chemicals in Diet soda to erupt!

With the failed Rootbeer explosion, the kids were ready to try another experiment. So we used the bottle from the first attempt and turned to another experiment from Grandma's box of tricks. This time it was baking soda mixed with vinegar. Daniel got to measure the baking soda and put it in and James got to pour in the vinegar. It didn't erupt but it made a great LAVA show. The kids were satisfied for today.

Pictured: in back are James and Thomas (our neighbor) and in front are Daniel and Sophia

Lovely Lava Flow

After a trip to the commisary on Monday we were ready to try again.

This is the blow up crew, with Sophia and I in the shadows. We collected a few stray boys on the way to the park. Pictured we have Daniel, Paul, James, Seth, Sterling, and Philip. Cat, Patrick, and Thomas joined us a little later.

It isn't a great picture as the sun was in their faces.. but you get the idea!

The first try was a bust. It would have worked pretty well but as Sterling was "pulling the pin" he knocked over the bottle of Diet Coke. So it made a big mess but no cool gyser to see.

Take 2

(Seth, one of our neighbors, was clearly pretty impressed!)

Take 3 for today

There it is!!!

Diet Coke with 7-9 mentos is the magic.

Thanks to Cat and her extra bottles of Diet Coke and Grandma Packer for all the packs of Mint Mentos we could try it again and again and again!

Little kid science at it's best!