experiment

Spear a Potato

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Would you ever think you could stab an ordinary drinking straw into a potato? Neither did I. Or my kids.

Until our science experiment last week.

But here it is.

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A straw in a potato.

Here’s how to do it. You know, in case you have littles at home you want to teach about inertia.

First, soak the potato in water for about 30 minutes. Don’t worry – it’ll still be raw (read: hard). Using a strong, fast thrust, push the straw into the potato.

It won’t break. The straw, that is. The potato will. Its skin, anyway.

Why it works: basic inertia. An object at rest (the potato) wants to stay at rest. An object in motion (the straw) will keep moving until it can’t anymore.

Each time we do an experiment, the kids also do a little paper. Very basic. It lists the name of the experiment, the procedure, what the kids think will happen, what actually happened, and why it worked.

–Wendy

Science Experiment: Fun with Colors

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We did a science experiment in our homeschool last week – those are the boys’ favorite things to do! I looked through the book on simple experiments I’d picked up from the library and found one that didn’t require a trip to the store first. Here’s what we came up with.

Tear a paper towel into strips and put a dot of green food coloring (or marker ink) about two inches from the bottom.

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I made sure to get a strip of towel that didn’t have any printing on it when we did this.

Next, place your strip in a glass of water, making sure the green dot is about an inch outside of the water (but inside the glass). Wait 10-15 minutes.

What’s supposed to happen: your green dot should disappear, leaving your water yellow and your paper towel blue as the dyes separate.

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Ours didn’t work perfectly, but we did a get a bit of blue on the paper towel, so it wasn’t a total misfortune.

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And the most important part was that the kids had fun learning!

Happy weekend!

–Wendy