Over Christmas, I had the pleasure of lounging around in a house that is loaded with plants… including blooming ones. Usually I just keep my mouth shut and leave anything associated with plant material to the very capable care of my wife. But I couldn’t resist asking about the hyacinths she had made bloom during the holiday season. I thought that the growing bulbs might be of use to science teachers who want a novel way of studying root systems,…
There’s nothing more fun than racing things at high speed! But how to do it in a safe, semi-controlled, educational manner? One great idea is using CO2 cartridges to propel balsa-wood based vehicles. Here’s some of the the details! First of all, let’s look at a few of the creative cars. These babies are about a foot long, and the bodies are carved out of raw chunks of balsa. In order for the racing to be fair, wheels and axles can…
To introduce (or review) the concept of average speed for physics students, there’s nothing more fun than measuring the speed of toy cars! Students are provided with a selection of toy cars and then asked to assess average speed of the vehicle. I highly recommend buying a few toys from your nearby “dollar store” – these toys often have strange behaviours and idiosyncrasies that make the task just a little more challenging! Students are allowed to use any technique they…
Ever wonder what’s inside a dry cell? Apologies to the Energizer bunny, but here is a cell that has been chopped in half; The parts are a little different from the old zinc-carbon cells; A – combination zinc powder/alkaline electrolyte paste where electrons are released (anode). B – brass conducting rod where the released electrons are collected. C – hard to see in the above diagram, but this is a fabric that separates anode from cathode. D – mixture of…
It’s always a fun activity to dissect owl pellets – if you’ve never done it before, you really should give it a try, you can learn a lot about owls and what they eat. Here’s a few pictures from a ScienceMan grade 7 owl pellet lab: As long as you are using owl pellets from biological supply companies, this activity is perfectly safe – the owl pellets are fumigated so as to eliminate any chance of disease. The pellets are…
You don’t have to do much research to learn that people are dropping their pay TV services in record numbers. It’s not hard to imagine why. Personally, I finally got sick of paying $100/month cable bills for a bunch of junk channels that I never watch. It’s only due to laziness that I never cut my cable a long time ago – I was afraid of the hassle, but ironically, it’s been a lot of fun switching to alternate sources…
When people think about English as a Second Language (ESL), we often don’t consider the full implications of needing to get proper language training. It’s often a lot more serious than just being able to participate in everyday conversation. Consider that many immigrants may want to qualify for colleges or training programs. For example, how do you pass an entrance exam for a science program, when you don’t know science vocabulary in the English language? Thankfully, there are some wonderful…
OK, I admit it, I’m a bit of a “tree-hugger”, and that means I re-use and recycle pretty religiously. So take my following comments with a grain of salt! One consumer product item that gets my goat a bit is pump bottles. Have you ever taken these things apart? It’s surprising how many plastic, metal, and rubber parts contribute to these pump mechanisms: Now for some products, it might be a net benefit – for example, the liquid soap dispenser…
I recently had a good look at the shingles on my house, and unfortunately, it looks like they need replacing. But then I got to thinking, perhaps, since I have to do work on the roof anyway, this might be a good time to investigate solar energy. What’s really neat is there is a great source of solar panel and off-grid information right in my backyard – SolarPanel.ca is located in Wabamun, AB, very close to where I live. I…
Most of us have carbon monoxide detectors in our homes, but don’t give them a second thought. That was the case for me as well, at least until yesterday. While hacking away at the computer, I was startled by a repeating series of deafening beeps – once my slow brain figured out that it was not the smoke detector, I noticed that display on the CO detector was flashing with a reading of 357 ppm. It turns out the flashing…