Science Fair

The West View Elementary Science Fair is upon us. Guy U and I have agreed to chair it again for the PTA. Not that anyone else wanted or asked us to do it. We just took interest in it last year after hearing some complaints about way things were run and we were willing to work with the teachers to make changes. At first, there was the fear of whether we'd get some backlash regarding any modifications, but surprisingly enough the teachers here are very accommodating. "You want to change the judging rubric? Sure! You want to split out the information packets? Go for it!" Of course, I did sense a little frustration when some of the changes didn't go as smoothly as planned, but we learn from our mistakes. We also have lots of volunteers who are very willing to help and have great suggestions. You never know if you're going to get stuck working with people who either don't give a rat's ass about the entire situation or fight you every step of the way. Even our temporary principal has given us the thumb's up for every idea.

Asia, as usual, wasn't sure what she wanted to do for the science fair. At first, she was going to show how to make a home-made lava lamp. Then she heard from me that there were some other kids that were doing the same thing. (Evidently other moms read the same Family Fun magazine that I do!) So Asia started to veer towards doing something with eggs. Last year she did a project in Mrs. S's class with turning an egg all rubbery by soaking it in vinegar. This prompted Asia to have her science project about what makes eggs the worst - Sprite, water, vinegar, Coke. You'd think it was the vinegar, but from the outside, Sprite made the egg look all cracked and bloated and yellowish. With the vinegar, at least the egg still looked like an egg. So this year, I looked for projects with eggs again and we found one where you can make an egg float by putting salt in the water. Asia then tried to see if she could get a glass bead or quarter to float. She used about 15 teaspoons of salt and no luck. John noted that if she put enough salt in it, the egg would definitely seem to float. It'd actually be sitting on a mountain of salt. I started trying to explain density to my dear daughter and she started to get flustered. This past weekend we finally agreed on what her science project would be - what cereal will get mushy faster. Of course, she wanted to throw Sprite into the mixture, so instead of what cereal will get mushy faster in milk, it was what cereal will get mushy faster in Sprite. I was able to explain to her that most people eat cereal in millk so it would make more sense to measure cereal in milk rather than Sprite. Thankfully she agreed.

I remember when science fairs were less about consumer science and more about your usual science basics. Our family did projects such as how birds fly and a model radio kit. I have a picture of my friend Denny holding a huge conch shell to her head. Now the popular science projects are what popcorn pops the fastest or what diaper holds more water. I even found some science fair suggestions like what food makes you produce gas. Anything to make science more interesting for kids these days!

Today we started Asia's project by choosing the cereals for her experiment. She almost took the opportunity to buy all sugary cereals like Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms. I got her to agree on Froot Loops, Total, and Cheerio's. Right away, she thought that Froot Loops would get soggy last because it has a coat of sugar. I like how she knew that it was a sugar bomb. Then it was a toss-up between Cheerio's and Total. She doesn't usually eat Total corn flakes and she said she has had Cheerio's before when they were mushy. Based on past experience, she was going to choose Cheerio's as the first to get soggy but then after I insisted she look at the two cereals and munch on them first, she thought the Total will get soggy first because it's so thin. Tomorrow or this weekend, we start the experiment and we'll see just what cereal gets mushy first.

Zach's project is going to be on what cleans stains off glass better - Windex, Vinegar, or Soap and Water. The tough thing is we were going to use a pane of glass or something and put some hard stains on it - dried jelly, marker, but I was hoping we'd have something in the basement to use. I haven't found anything yet so I'll have to keep looking. I asked him to write in his journal today because it's required for experiments and he wrote one line - I hypothesize that vinegar will work better. Then he got carried away on to something else. It's tough drawing the line between how much you help your older child when you think he should be able to do some of these things on his own. Yet he sees how much time you spend with his younger sibling and you hope he doesn't read into that.

Well we'll see how things go as our science fair experiments progress.