Homeschool Den

Experiment 1: What do ants eat? There are about 1300 different species of ants herein Australia. We’ve heard that there are more ants(by weight) in Australia than people in the world. I don’t know if that’s true, but I can tell you thatwe see streams of ants an inch thick heading upand down the side- walks in the parks andeverywhere. As an aside, DD was bit by a 1 inch...

In Australia we have 5, 10, 20, 50 cent coins and twogold coins $1 and $2. For this experiment we neededUS pennies. 1) We prepared 4 bowls with vinegar, water, salt and vinegar,salt and water. 2) The kids (each did their own experiment) added a pennyto each bowl. 3) We observed after 5, 10 and 15 minutes to discover whyscientists combine certain chemicals. Experiment from: Mudpies to Magnets

LD found that the vinegar/salt combination was theshiniest. Interestingly, DD’s vinegar/salt soaked penny was NOTthe shiniest in her group (I think the water/saltcombination was). Because of this we talked about theneed for scientists to perform experiments over and over.

What you need: 1) Take a stalk of celery, cut the stem and slice the celeryup the center. 2) Stand the celery up in two pots. Fill the cups withwater and add 2 drops of dye to each cup. (I let the kidschoose their own colors, but you get the best results withred and blue). 3) Observe every 15 minutes. 4) Since ED also participated we did a stalk from...

We got almost immediate results from ED’s celery whereshe took a big bite out of the stem! It made for interestingdiscussions as to why so much dye accumulated on thatside. When I asked LD why the water was going up the stalkwhen gravity pulls things down, he first answered, “Maybeit’s evaporating.” (Hmm… but it’s not hot in here I pointedout.) “Maybe it’s crawling. Wait but it’s not alive,” hequickly added....

We did some experiments with oil and water before, butthis had some pretty interesting results. You can findmore details at education.com which has a wonderfularray of science experiments for all ages.

At first, the dye was suspended in the oil, but quickly the“fireworks” began. The red separated out first, followedby the blue and yellow (which looked green). We alllay on the floor and said “ooooh” a lot! This really wasa good experiment for the littlies.

In the end, the water turned brownish. LDand I had a good discussion about colorcombinations.

After many of our experiments, LD and DD want tocreate their own experiments. They add all kinds ofingredients to see what happens. In this “experiment”they added (as I recall): water, vinegar, baking soda, margarine, flour, yeast,peppermint, cinnamon, food coloring and pepper. They took it out to the garden to see what it woulddo to the ant trail. I heard that their “ant poison”worked (I was cooking dinner and didn’t observe).