Kaleidoscope Enrichment @enrichscience-blog - Tumblr Blog

Posts

Make simple submarines using recycled water bottles. Place in water so bottle fills with water. Then blow air though an attached straw so it rises again.

So many planets! 715 more recently identified, all in multi-planet systems!

"This is the largest windfall of planets that's ever been announced at one time," said Douglas Hudgins from Nasa's astrophysics division.

"Second, these results establish that planetary systems with multiple planets around one star, like our own Solar System, are in fact common.

"Third, we know that small planets - planets ranging from the size of Neptune down to the size of the Earth - make up the majority of planets in our galaxy."

Interesting fact of the day...

Humans have about 1,000 genes to regulate our sense to smell. Of them, only about 500 work; the rest have mutated over time and no longer function.

Considering ,that the human genome is comprised of about 25,000 genes, it would seem that smell must be pretty important to us! By comparison, the next largest gene family controls serotonin receptors, which are influence our mental health and functioning. The whole serotonin family is just 15 genes.

Want to learn more? Check out the Naked Genetics podcast for their episode "Smells like gene spirit."

Build a super complicated, crazy contraption to distract the evil villain, Mr. Fluffy, before he can use his Puppinator to change all of the world's dogs into cats!

Check out our fun fall crafts, tips for young entrepreneurs, information about programming for kids, explosions and a great science challenge! And get updates on next week's great programs!

Recently, I was asked to help plan a dinosaur party for one of our Kaleidoscope Kids. Of course, I jumped at the chance! I knew it'd be a ton of fun to make this little girl's 3rd Birthday a blast!

At the Farmer's Market this week, I was asked if I had ideas for simple, inexpensive crafts kids could do at upcoming Halloween and Thanksgiving events. Are you kidding? Of course, I do!

This is a great super secret science challenge all about bridges. Try your hand at structural engineering and have a lot of fun too! Help The Weather Weasel cross between two buildings using only gumdrops, marshmallows and toothpicks as supplies!

(via Kaleidoscope Learning: The SECOND Super Secret Science Challenge)

Organizing thoughts is a difficult task, for both teachers and students. Lack of a medium to organize all these thoughts can lead to stress, confusion, and lack of success in regards to yourself, or your students. Utilize these 5 Best Free Mind Mapping Tools for Teachers in order to be the best educator possible and ensure that your students are able to reach their full potential.

KLC was lucky enough to attend the Highlands Festival at Waterloo last weekend. In addition to bringing great crafts to the Festival, we met some amazing crafters. One of my favorites were the ladies from the Simpatico Fiber Collective. Rebecca and Julianne are handspinners, knitters, weavers and felters working in rural Hunterdon County. They sell beautiful, wearable fiber art and supplies for knitters and spinners.

Rebecca Dioda

Julianne Targan

In addition to their lovely wearable art, they're happy to share their knowledge with those who would like to learn. Those are my kinds of people! So enjoy this short video of Rebecca explaining how her parlor spinning wheel works. (There's a good bit of simple machines science in there.)

I've tried my hand at spinning, and let me tell you, it's not as easy as Rebecca makes it look! She uses that amazing yarn to create all kinds of wonderful knitted creations, like the shawl below.

In this clip, Joanne explains the basics of needle felting. This is a really relaxing hobby I've recently discovered. She creates amazing projects with her felting, and she felts woven fabrics that she creates as well.

KLC had the privaledge of attending World Maker Faire 2013 in New York this year, with our own table and a fun marshmallow launcher for the kids to make! It was an exhausting, amazing weekend -- for me, my husband, Steve, and for my daughters, Caitie and Gwen. Maker Faire is a complete creative explosion. Even with four days to explore, I still wanted more time to check out all the wonderful projects!

That's me, ready to go early on Saturday morning. Folks started lining up long before the gates opened at 10 am!

As a I mentioned previously, we attended Maker Faire Education Day on Thursday, then we were back out to Queens on Friday afternoon for our official set up and dinner.

Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of MAKE, hands out paella to all the makers on Friday night. Thanks for the dinner Dale! It was great!

Gwen, ready to go and marshmallows loaded.Our friend Linda stopped by both days to help us out, thankfully. We made A LOT of marshmallow catapults with kids and adults!

So we all had fun and launched hundreds (thousands?) of marshmallows all over the Zone E. But what other booths were awesome? Well, glad you asked...

I have to start by giving a shout out to our friends at Let's Make Robots. These guys are doing great work helping everyone in the world learn to build and program their own bots. And they're fun to grab a beer with as well. Chris Robinson, of Rocket Brand Studios, talked himself horse both days, explaining some of the great projects created by LMR members. (BTW, we highly recommend Rocket Brand's robots and use the Tadpole in our robotics classes at KLC.)

I also want to give props to some young makers from KLC's neck of the woods. The guys with The 721st MCB, an Amateur Radio Club from Warren County NJ who brought their amazing E-APS Emergency Antenna Platform System to share with the world. This lightweight open source portable tool helps Amateur Radio Operators deploy HF and VHF/UHF antennas high in the field using standard parking lot light / flag poles. Great work!

Now, as some of you know, I love soft circuits, e-textiles and wearable electronics. So I was super exciting to see and meet Becky Stern on Friday night! She was even wearing her Firewalker shoes! I loved the work of bitwise, Blockuits, and Make Anything. All had prejects just right for young makers!

Other favorites included the fantastic fractals at Fractal Kit, the cool recycled boats made with the ScrapKins folks, the great bicycle powered blender by Frankenbike and Friends, the amazing arduino controlled RC toy car by RoboTech, (need to get that one for a KLC class) and the novel approach to working with DNA from Gemonikon.

I could go on and on, but I won't. There was simply too much awesome to put it all in a blog post. But if you want to take a look for yourself, the hardworking editors at MAKEhave been posting like mad. KLC was awarded an Editor's Choice award! How cool!

As a self-respecting nerd, I have a fondness for Mythbusters. This Emmy-winning show -- featuring special effects experts/mad scientists Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman – seeks to bust or confirm urban legends and popular myths using a positively gleeful approach to the scientific method. Mayhem often ensues. Failure is an option. Their tagline is “Don’t try this at home.” You get the idea.

That’s why I was so thrilled when my students started watching the show and asked to replicate some of their wild experiments in class. Yup. That’s pure Maker gold right there, and totally educational too. Even better, my mad Google skills revealed that there are official lesson plans available online for free, offered by the fine folks of Discovery’sMythBusters: The Explosive Exhibition traveling museum event. Sweet! So I clicked on the “Educator” tab and looked at the experiments provided. First up, the “Airplane on a Conveyer Belt” episode – one of the most controversial and awesome myths explored on the show and perfect fodder for a discussion of Newton’s First and Third Laws of Motion. The idea is simple: If you put a moving airplane on a conveyor belt moving at the same speed in the opposite direction, will it be able to take off?

The experiment offered in the lesson plan: a balloon zipping down a string. It just about broke my nerd-girl heart. Don’t get me wrong. I love balloon on a string. It’s super fun. But when presented for education, it is also boring, boring, boring! As in the “Airspeed” lesson plan, step-by-step instructions are given. Attach a piece of drinking straw to a balloon, tie a piece of fishing line to a chair, thread the line through the straw, blow up balloon and launch. That folks is a procedure, not an experiment. You can ask all the leading questions you want, but the fact is, the kids know what’s going to happen. And though they may not know the exact jargon, they get why it works. Not a huge mystery here. Not really myth busting. Where are the planes? Where’s the conveyer belt? What went wrong between awesome, action-packed T.V. show and mundane, run-of-the-mill science class? I did a different experiment with my students. I pulled out the LEGOs and the balloons. Students were tasked with making a freestanding vehicle that could be powered by the propulsion of the balloon. That’s some serious design work right there. You need to consider the mass of the vehicle, the wheel base, how to attach the balloon, how to achieve maximum thrust and more. We took the time to prototype, test and optimize our cars using a design cycle and shared our ideas. (Those that need a nudge can take inspiration from 2013’s Maker Camp “Rocket-Propelled Toy Car” Week 1 project.)

Once students had their vehicles built we used wax paper as make-shift conveyer belts, pulling the paper in the direction opposite of the car, just as Adam and Jamie used paper and cloth in the Mythbusters episode. We experienced many of the same frustrations, trying to keep the moving car on the paper, accidentally stepping on and ripping the belt, etc. Just like in the episode! It was difficult, and frustrating and challenging. Just like real science and engineering!

In the end we only got a couple of good runs, but that’s ok. The whole class shared in the triumph together. We also busted the myth. Bonus! This of course led to great discussion about why it worked and plans to test the same concept with motorized cars instead. So thank you Mythbusters. You guys rock! And my advice for teachers? Skip the boring procedural experiments and make some mayhem instead. You’ll be glad you did.

The Highlands Festival was full of wonderful music, with some really great bands gracing its two stages. But on Sunday, KLC hosted music for the kids and let them play along, thanks to our friend Deb of Morning Door and Brook Falls Farm.

Here's Deb making shakers with our first group.

The fabulous Vi Hart of spirals, Fibonacci and Being a Plant. It'll be perfect for math class tomorrow.

(via http://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?u=/watch?v=ahXIMUkSXX0&feature=share&a=a3fo6TCvXUWdpKFLHfTYrg)

Our first Super Secret Science Challenge! Want to play along at home? (via Kaleidoscope Learning: The FIRST Super Secret Science Challenge)

As part of our homeschool Cooperative for Science and Math, we've been exploring the experiments featured on the Mythbusters show. Last week, we decided to test one of my absolute favorite myths: "Toast will always fall buttered side down."

lookslikescience-blog

Chemical Biologist, nature lover, mom and teacher. The cicada in my hand is just a cicada, but he has big plans, I’m sure.

enrichscience-blog

Somehow I totally missed that I was posted on ''This is what a scientist looks like. '' Neato!

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Kaleidoscope Enrichment