Science Experiment: Lava Lamp

It's time for another science experiment! We're going to make our very own Lava Lamp!

This project requires four things: 

* an empty, clean bottle

* vegetable oil

* food coloring

* Alka-Seltzer tablet

First step: fill bottle about 3/4 full with oil.

Next step: fill nearly to the top with water. Watch where the water goes.

Note--have the child that spills more pour in the water. It makes cleanup a lot easier.

Even though the water was poured on top of the oil, it ends up at the bottom. Why?

(Water is denser than oil, so it sinks.)

Ask your child to try to mix the water and oil by shaking the bottle. 

When they don't mix, tell your child to shake harder.

Eventually you should explain why they won't mix. (Basically the water molecules form an exclusive clique, not allowing any other non-polar molecules to join them. Oil is non-polar, so it can't join the party. Check out a more detailed explanation here.)

Of course, if your kids have lots of energy, you could have them shake the bottle for a very long time.

They may, however, really want to get to the next step:

Adding the food coloring! (A great use for a food additive that's not so good to put into our bodies.)

The instructions said to put in 10 drops, but we put in a lot more than that. Where does the dye go?

Finally came the last part: put in a piece of an Alka-Seltzer tablet.

It takes over 20 seconds for something noticeable to happen after the Alka-Seltzer is dropped in.

But then it becomes quite apparent; something magical is happening. Blue bubbles are rising.

They become more and more agitated. Once they reach the surface, the blue sinks back down to the bottom. The Alka-Seltzer creates carbon dioxide gas, which clings to the molecules of water, which have been colored. The gas is less dense than the water or oil, so it rises to the surface, attached to the colored water. Once the carbon dioxide reaches the surface, the gas is released, and the colored water molecule sinks back to the bottom.


The kids found this fascinating.

They took turns putting in the other pieces of the Alka Seltzer tablet.

We did this experiment many times. Actually, it's a demonstration, as we're watching it over and over. To really be an experiment, we need to be able to change things: amount of Alka-Seltzer, or have several bottles with different amounts or types of oil. Nevertheless, I think they learned at least a couple scientific things during this lava lamp demonstration.

Later we did it in the evening and used a flashlight to illuminate the lava lamp, and it looked so cool.

This was a really fun project, and we still have it on the shelf to share with visitors. The lava lamp has made a trip to school, and I think it will be around for awhile.

A Little Snowshoe Trip with a Special Treat

On a day off, I took the kids up for a little snowshoeing, the first time this winter. They were very excited. I think they were more excited that I let them pack their own snacks than that they were going snowshoeing, but I'll pretend that it was the outside time they were craving. We hadn't received snow for awhile, so the snow was hard packed, meaning that you didn't really need snowshoes to walk on it. That was okay, it made it much, much easier to practice!

We also packed a sled and skis so Desert Boy could ski down and Desert Girl could take the sled. That was exciting, too, as the more snow toys, the better.

It was just below freezing, so it felt good. When Desert Boy asked how far we were going, I told him he could decide. Wow, the day just couldn't get any better for him!

Desert Girl was about to have her highlight of the day:

She found something on the snow.

Now, she may be three years old, but she's still a little like a baby sometimes, wanting to fully explore things with all her senses.

First, she looks at it and touches it.

Then she smells it and eats it.

Well, I guess whatever it was, it was good.

We continued a bit more, then turned around and switched the snow gear. It was a rockin' time down the gentle slope. Yippee, a fun little jaunt in the snow!

Desert Boy's Super Washing Detergent

 So when we last left, we had a 1/4 bar of Ivory soap all big and bubbly after 90 seconds in the microwave as part of our Ivory soap experiment. Have you tried it? It's funner than you might think!
After watching the amazing transformation and then feeling the changed texture, what do you do next?

You could use the soap in the bath or shower, although it might be a little crumbly.
You could make a soap sculpture.
Or you could make some laundry detergent! It turns out this option is quite easy, in fact, much easier than I had ever imagined.

 You only need three ingredients:

Washing soda (sodium carbonate), borax (sodium tetraborate), and soap (Ivory, Fels Naptha, Zote, and homemade soaps are the most used ones I've seen while searching the Internet). 

We had microwaved 1/4 bar of Ivory, and I grated another 1/4 bar (on the right side) to compare the volume. The grated soap had a lot less volume than the microwaved soap, but I figured it didn't matter much. So we mixed 1/2 bar Ivory soap, 1/2 cup washing soda, and 1/2 cup Borax together.

I saw some recipes that added essential oils, baking soda, and/or oxiclean (which you can make with washing soda, water, and hydrogen peroxide), but I wanted to start with the simplest recipe and then add from there if it needed a boost.

Desert Boy was the happy mixer. Then he made a label for the detergent. I told him he got to pick the name for it. I made some suggestions, but he went with his own name: 

Desert Boy's Super Washing Detergent

1/2 bar Ivory soap (grated; or microwaved 90 seconds, cooled, and crumbled)

1/2 cup washing soda

1/2 cup Borax

Mix well. Store in closed container with a cool label. Use 1 tablespoon per load of laundry (and slightly more if the load is really dirty). Safe for HE machines.

Easy--and cheap! So far we've been happy with the results. I thought the laundry detergent I was using was ecofriendly, but a check on the Environmental Working Group's website showed it wasn't as nice as I thought. How does yours rank?

I guess we'll go microwave some more Ivory soap!

The Ivory Soap Experiment

 I've been looking at the Internet to find fun kid science experiments and found the magical Ivory soap experiment. It's at a lot of sites, but the ones I saw it at first were in this cool science booklet that you can download for free from While He Was Napping and Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas. (I have to admit, I hadn't done that much surfing of other blogs till this year, and I can't believe how many good ones are out there!)

Back to the experiment. Ivory soap is different than other soaps because they infuse air into the soap. In fact, it has enough air in it that it floats! (Give it a try and then test other bars of soap.)

 First we took one bar of soap and cut it into quarters.

 Then we got out the magnifying glass and took a good look at it to see the structure of the soap. We didn't see any noticeable air pockets.

 We put one quarter of the soap onto a paper plate (a regular plate would work just fine, too--I was concerned about the mess, but it's just soap!). Our plan was to put it into the microwave and heat it. We heard that something special would happen...

 We set the microwave for 2 minutes, but it took less than that to see an amazing transformation:

 The little quarter bar of soap had overflowed the paper plate with a massive white foamy substance.

It was lots of fun to play with!

So, why did this happen? The air in the soap expands as it is heated. This is an example of Charles' Law, which states that as a temperature of a gas increases, so does it volume.

Try microwaving another bar soap. What happens? (Spoiler alert) Most melt, because they don't have air whipped into the soap. Apparently P&G's founder's son, James Gamble, created the formula with air in it, and the public has loved it ever since Ivory soap has been sold since 1879.

Now, what do you do with all that foamy soap? Stay tuned--we've got a productive way to use it coming soon! **Updated: Here's the link for Part 2**

Outside Time

 We're in a thawing period, which is a nice change from the bitter cold of January. One afternoon I took the kids and some of their friends out on the ranch to look for cattails. After digging up roots for a little while, the kids spotted ice nearby and wanted to go play. So off we went. The water under the ice had been absorbed by the land, so the ice cracked and crunched as we walked on it. It was pretty awesome.

 We had to go through a little mud to get to it, and go under a barbed wire fence. The bigger kids were off in a flash, and I stayed with the little kids.
 
Isaac was off after the big kids in no time.

 My little princess (apparently you are a princess if you have the right hairstyle), was a little more cautious.

 I spotted Ava running in the willows. Willows are such a fun place for the kids to go and play. Although I'm always glad to have our dog Henry along so he can sniff out any animals in the willows and keep us from surprises.

 As Ava was running, she reached a particularly slick spot of ice and down she went.


It didn't faze her at all, and next thing she was checking out some ice close up. (Sorry for all the mud that day, Jenny! Hopefully it came out!)

 The boys trailed Ava, but eventually emerged from the willows. Then it was time for another adventure--searching for bones. They found some, but I made them to adhere to our rule: if the bones still have hair on them, then they need to leave them till another time. And all the ones we found were a little too fresh.


They had their sticks, though, and that meant plenty of adventures ahead.

 Off they headed, toward those big mountains.

Oh my, this makes me want to be five again!

The Great Homemade Yogurt Taste Test

 We recently got some raw milk from a friend, and I decided to try my hand at making yogurt. I found so many recipes on the Internet that I didn't know where to start. So I decided I would try a few and compare so I would know what my favorite was.

The first recipe I used was out of the Fannie Farmer cookbook. It was basically to heat one quart of milk to 200 degrees, then let cool to 110 degrees, add two tablespoons of plain yogurt, stir, put in crockery bowl, and keep warm for several hours. I realized that the high temperature was pasteurizing the yogurt and killing some of the enzymes and other great benefits of the raw milk, but that was okay, as this was just one of several recipes.

The yogurt set up quickly in the bowl and looked like store-bought yogurt.

The next recipe I used was from An Organic Wife. She used a gallon milk to make 5 quarts of yogurt, but I didn't want that much so I scaled it down to 2 pints. I poured the raw milk into the jars, put them in a pot of water, and heated the water up to 105 degrees, removed the jars, added 3 tablespoons yogurt.

Then I closed the jars and put them and 110 degree water into a mini cooler. They stayed there for about 12 hours and then went into the refrigerator for 24 hours.

 They had a nice consistency when done. Apparently raw milk can produce some very runny yogurt.

Here I am tipping the jars to see how runny or firm the yogurt was.

The final recipe from eHow was very similar to what An Organic Wife used: heat milk to 110 degrees, pour in jar, add in yogurt, and keep warm (at 110 degrees) for 8 hours. Unfortunately I didn't keep a close enough eye on the milk (I was trying to multitask and do some other cooking), and very quickly the milk got too hot:

 And then it got too hot again in the jar, as I had left it on top of the stove with the oven on, and apparently that is not a warm environment, but a hot environment! So the yogurt was pasteurized, but in this case came out looking kind of funny:

I tried the same recipe again, but this time put it in the oven with just the oven light on, and that was a much more consistent environment.

Then it was time for the taste test! We had the Dannon plain yogurt, which had been our starter, Yogurt #1-pasteurized, Fannie Farmer recipe; Yogurt #2-raw, An Organic Wife recipe with cooler method; Yogurt #3-WikiHow recipe but accidentally pasteurized; and Yogurt #4--raw-WikiHow recipe at correct temperature.

I enlisted additional taste testers. It wasn't a blind taste test, everyone knew which was which (if they could read). And what was our favorite? (Drum roll, please)

The favorite of both my husband and I was Yogurt #1, the pasteurized yogurt. That surprised us. It had a slightly sour taste that was actually quite pleasing, giving it a little more flavor than the plain yogurt. Yogurt #3, which had been accidentally pasteurized, had a similar flavor but a really weird consistency that wasn't pleasant. Yogurts #2 and #4 were good, but, well, just very plain. I was hoping to like the raw yogurt better, as I know it's full of wonderful things that get taken out by pasteurization. The kids didn't really have a favorite, they just thought it was a really fun thing to do taste testing.

We've been eating our yogurt, mixing in homemade jam to give it some extra oomph. Maybe next year we'll have another yogurt taste test. In the meantime, I'm ready to keep experimenting. Do you have a favorite yogurt recipe?