First, we made our own puff paint.
I used the recipe from here. I made my own self-rising flour with just regular flour, baking powder and salt (recipe here). You can just microwave the drawing for 5-10s and the paint rises!
Science Factoid: The reason the puff-paint "rises" is because of the baking powder in the mixture. When heated, baking powder releases carbon dioxide (a gas) which bubbles up within whatever your making.
Since it's so close to Halloween, we all drew Halloween-themed pictures. Here's mine:
Science Factoid: The reason the puff-paint "rises" is because of the baking powder in the mixture. When heated, baking powder releases carbon dioxide (a gas) which bubbles up within whatever your making.
Since it's so close to Halloween, we all drew Halloween-themed pictures. Here's mine:
Another sciency thing we did is a trick with milk and food coloring. Basically you have a plate of milk, add drops of food coloring and then add one drop of dish soap (surfactant) and watch the colors swirl together. Carolynne (my niece) wasn't as interested in this as we were, but it was still fun. You can watch a video of the phenomenon here.
Science Factoid: There are a few reasons why the milk/food coloring reacts the way it does. Milk is mostly water, but also has vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fat dispersed within it. First, when you drop the soap into the milk it drops the surface tension and allows the food coloring to move more freely within the milk. Second, the soap also forms little micelles (cluster of soap molecules) around the fats, allowing for the fats to be more dispersed. The movement that happens when the micelles meet the fats causes a lot of movement. Once the fat is dispersed, the movement will stop. And lastly, adding soap breaks a lot of chemical bonds between the fats and proteins, causing them to bend and roll around. This shoves around the food coloring molecules - so you can see a lot of movement.
Dave's mom sent us a care package a few weeks ago that included a Haunted Gingerbread House. It had all of its parts already made, all we had to do was put it together and decorate it! Once we had decorated it, we actually found out that the majority of the parts were vegan, so it was quickly devoured (1/2 of the members in my apt. are vegan). So thanks Barbara, Carolynne had a lot of fun decorating it, and the rest of us had a great time eating it!
And here is a picture from my recent trip to Albuquerque, NM. I didn't get to visit much, because I went for work, but this huge mountain was always in my view. I believe it's Sandia Peak.
Dave's mom sent us a care package a few weeks ago that included a Haunted Gingerbread House. It had all of its parts already made, all we had to do was put it together and decorate it! Once we had decorated it, we actually found out that the majority of the parts were vegan, so it was quickly devoured (1/2 of the members in my apt. are vegan). So thanks Barbara, Carolynne had a lot of fun decorating it, and the rest of us had a great time eating it!
As if that wasn't enough going on this weekend, we also went out to Walden Pond to have a picnic and to go for a walk and do some leaf-peeping.
And here is a picture from my recent trip to Albuquerque, NM. I didn't get to visit much, because I went for work, but this huge mountain was always in my view. I believe it's Sandia Peak.
