Pretty Exciting Week

This week's new specimens-for-the-microscope:
1. A snippet of cedar with the little pollen-releasing niblets on it, for the stereoscope
2. Some actual pollen grains shaken onto a slide, for the compound microscope

It's like Professor Eisner said - - the stereoscope is a more fascinating instrument. The bit of cedar has all sorts of shapes and crevices, and if you look closely you can see a few thousand teeny pollen bits just getting ready to fall. The pollen-on-a-slide, cranked up to 400x, just looks like a bunch of circles.


Last week's chromatography practice worked out well:

as you can see newspaper works better than computer printer paper. Still, both of them yielded some pretty good separation:






Important facts about chromatography
1. It's what they use in all those DNA tests you see in the news
2. It's a lot of fun at home



I got these great molecules on eBay, and they are now available in the classroom:





I took the liberty of doing a Molecular Models Focus Group at home before the class, and I learned:
1. Six-year-old fingers have enough strength to build with these,
2. Six-year-olds can totally grok what this set is about.

What became clear in class is:
3. These things have INCREDIBLE "touch me now" appeal.

As a demo I built a propane molecule and, wouldn't you know it, I just happened to have a BernzOmatic handy just in case somebody didn't know what propane is. The flame, of course, caused a wave of excitement; although the sparks from the traditional hand striker were perhaps even more popular. I hope everybody remembered the molecules part after all the uproar.


There was also a lot of fuss about the camera I brought, so I ended up taking a few group pictures. I don't want to post pictures of your kids on the web, so contact me privately for copies.
 
Thanks to the kids for bringing in all their questions and a scorpion and a magnificent huge conch shell and a really good chert (Texas Agate) sample. I totally missed the great synchronicity between the chert (AKA flint) and the striker above. Oops.

Thanks to the grownups for letting me spend time with their delightful-beyond-belief children.