Thursday, January 25, 2007

Pine cones, and Science Specialist goes YouTube

 There were so many demonstrations and artifacts to share last week, that we never got to the Question Box. I knew I owed the class some Question Box time, and you can bet they knew it too. We dove right into it without any preliminaries. The first question in the box was about pine cones. Actually it was a pine cone. In the box. Not a written question. An actual pine cone. I think our young cognitive scientists enjoyed the play on symbology::reality. They were off like a hurricane, asking about seeds and seed-eaters and sap and edible versus poisonous and geometry and developmental genetics. Dang if them kids didn't spend twenty minutes asking questions about a pine cone! Your average professor teaching a college seminar would count herself lucky indeed to find students so involved and thoughtful.
This week's demonstration involved baking soda and vinegar. Parental note: mixing baking soda and vinegar is a lot of fun, and may save you on one of those awful cabin-bound rainy days.
Now, those bubbles you get from baking soda and vinegar are carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide will suffocate a fire, which was demonstrated by use of a candle. Join the class by watching the demo here (hosted by YouTube).


Welcome to the classroom. And thank you for the privilege of spending time with your crop of affable young geniuses.

1 comment:

Tracy said...

Loved the video!! Thanks so much for all you do!