Polymers, Acids, and Bases

Poor little blog. I've neglected you. This is why.

• I've had nothing blog worthy to post (a winter without snow is like summer without a pool...terrible)
  
• As soon as we tuck the kids into bed, I've been crawling into bed myself (the little sprout is zapping up all my energy)
• But mostly, I've just been blogger lazy

But I have to at least update you on our fun Science Fridays. Well, actually, Jackie has extended the science fun to 4 days a week. Jackie is amazing, but she just took things up a notch. She has developed a curriculum that she drops off on Mondays. The curriculum has activities and experiments for us to do that lead up to the big Friday Science morning.

I don't know if I mentioned, but we trade services. I send her home with two meals each week for her amazing services. But she keeps upping me. Pretty soon I will be cleaning her house and doing her laundry! But that is besides the point. At any given time during the week, we have about 2 experiments going on thanks to her. Like this one...that was a little stinky.

We just finished up our section on polymers.

We made three types of glue. Glue out of half and half, glue out of whole milk, and glue out of powdered milk. Then we constructed things with the glue and compared their strength.

The glue made from half and half was the strongest.

Then to finish off the polymer section, Jackie brought silly string (a polymer).

Now we are studying reactions, specifically acid and base reactions.
But first we had to figure our which substances were acids, and which were bases with out homemade ph indicating cabbage juice
.

We combined an acid (Tang) with a base (baking soda) and put it in our mouth.
The reaction was a fizzy treat.

This was their reaction of "pop rock" candy.
Right now my kids think science = treats.

And finally, another acid base reaction.
Vinegar + baking soda = carbon dioxide

We love Jackie.
We love Fridays.