Science Club Updates

Local History & Geography:

Our field trip to participate in a local archeological dig got rained out, so we spent another week on the IDNR "People and Animals of Illinois' Past" bin. Next week we will either have another field trip opportunity (again, my plan is weather dependent) or dig into the IDNR "Illinois Mammals" bin, which we peeked into and it is chock-full of interesting animal skulls and furs!

• lay out the complete Human Evolution Card Set from Clocca Concepts and recall previous lessons on the Tree of Life and scientific names
• watch the Bradshaw Foundation video of human migration from Africa (The Peopling of the World: Humankind's Global Migration)
• read Now You Know About Animals of the Ice Age
• look at the modern biome map of North America with the stencil from Waseca Biomes
• choose between making the North America map using the stencil or doing the activities from the Animals from Illinois' Past Activity Book (PDF)
  page 10 - Yesterday and Today
  page 18 - Searching for Answers
  page 19 - A Place in Time
  page 20 - What's for Dinner?
  page 21 - Past, Present, Future

Organic Chemistry:

We finished up Protein, added it to our binders, and started Fats and Oils.

• watch parts 1-7 of Stephen Hawking's Into the Universe
  Into the Universe Intro
  Are We Alone?
  Possibilities of Extraterrestrial Life
  How Did Life Begin?
  The Key to Known Life
  Finding Alien Worlds
  Alien Constituents
• crack open and compare duck egg and chicken egg
• add Protein to binder
• demonstration of Swirling Milk - we used a Qtip for the dish detergent
• design follow-up experiment ("Which Type of Milk Swirls the Longest?" from page 152 of The Curious Kid's Science Book) using whole milk, soy milk, almond milk, and heavy cream
• look at results of experiment
  whipping cream - 5 minutes 2.9 seconds
  almond milk - 4 minutes 57.7 seconds
  soy milk - 3 minutes 40.8 seconds
  whole milk - 1 minute 43.8 seconds
• read "The Science Behind the Swirling Milk Experiment" from Go Science Girls; revisit the "Mix 'em Up" portion of Science of Eggs
• look at simplistic Connectagons model of an arrangement of molecules with hydrophobic (water hating/fat loving) together and hydrophilic (water loving) together
• Becca's theory: the heavy whipping cream has more fat, and less water, which means the dish detergent had less effect on the surface tension and therefore the colors were slower in mixing

the slooooooooow swirling in the heavy cream

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