CRYSTAL ROPE

I am doing an experiment to see if I can grow a line of crystals along a piece of wool. I put 6 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda in two jars of hot water. I weighed down the wool with two paperclips. The wool will soak up the mixture and hopefully in a week's time there will be lots of crystals along the wool. I am excited to see what happens.

MY SOLAR SYSTEM MODEL

I am making a model of the solar system to hang in my bedroom. I will look up and see the sun and the planets above me. I am making them out of papier mache and paint. I am not sure how I will make the rings of Saturn yet. It will be amazing!

THE DAY I MET A REAL SCIENTIST AT THE THINK TANK

We went to a home ed day at the Think Tank in Birmingham and had a brilliant day. Mummy and I did a trail around the zoology section. We saw fossils of an ancient deer, an ancient crocodile and a triceratops. There were lots of stuffed animals. There were two huia birds that are both extinct, which is very sad. People used to kill them so they could wear their pretty feathers.

We then went to see a film on the big screen in the IMax. It was about penguins. It was amazing. We saw the Mummy and Daddy penguin look after their egg and their chick. It was funny when the chick lost its fluffy coat. I liked the elephant seals when they were yawning and making rude noises!

We did a workshop all about light. We made shadow shows and found things that glow in the dark.

We saw lots of old things like bicycles, trams, airplanes, cogs and wheels. We also played in the new science garden until it rained.

My favourite bit was the Cauldron Chemistry show. A wizard showed us how he could pass his magician's exams using science instead of magic. It was fun to watch him make potions and explosions. At the end of the show Mummy and I spoke to the wizard and we said hello to his friend who is a REAL scientist! His name is Ben and he is a paleobiologist! I have written about meeting him ....

 

DINOSAUR FOSSILS AT NEW WALK MUSEUM LEICESTER

I love dinosaurs and have been looking at lots of books about them. My favourite dinosaur is the Gigantosaurus. We went to the New Walk museum in Leicester with our cousin Margaret and saw lots of dinosaur fossils. There was a huge model of a dinosaur that lived in Leicestershire millions of years ago. It was a bit like a brontosaurus. There were also lots of rocks and crystals to look at. I saw some amazing ones from different parts of the world.  I bought a bag of pretty crystals from the museum shop. We also saw some devil's toenails like I found in Drakes Broughton.

AIR PRESSURE IS AMAZING

We did an experiment to find out how bubbles of air can make this float and sink in water. The force that makes this happen inside the bubble is called air pressure. In our experiment we filled a bottle with water and put a diver inside it. We made the diver from a plastic bag and attached it to a paperclip. The diver was supposed to sink when the bottle was squeezed and float when it was not squeezed. Unfortunately, this did not work. My diver just got stuck upside down. We are not sure why this happened. It is a mystery!

The next experiment we did worked much better. I screwed up a piece of paper and put it in the bottom of a glass. I filled up the washing bowl with water and then turned the glass upside down and put it in the water. You will never believe it, but the paper stayed completely dry! This is because the air inside the glass pushed up against the paper and kept it dry. Amazing!

 

 

We then did another amazing experiment. We filled a glass of water and put a piece of card underneath it. When we turned the glass of water upside down, the card stuck to it. Even though the water is really heavy it did not fall down! The reason this happens is because the pressure of the air pushing underneath the card is stronger than the pressure of the water to break the seal around the glass.



THE GREAT ASTRONOMER GALILEO

I went to see a storyteller at the Worcester Beeline festival. He told us all about the story of the astronomer Galileo who was the first person to discover that the Earth goes around the Sun and not the other way around. We also learned how the Moon travels around the Earth and how the shadow of the Earth makes us see the Moon differently during the month. It was fun pretending to be Galileo's students and to find out that he went to prison for making such amazing discoveries. Some people were scared by his ideas.

CRYSTALS

We made some crystals. We had lots of fun making them. We had sugar and water. We mixed it together it the sugar DISSOLVED. It means that when we mixed the sugar in, the sugar has to disappear. It is still in the water, but it is liquidy. Instead of being grainy and hard, it is liquidy. A couple of weeks it was allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll crystals because the liquid had EVAPORATED and left behind the hard sugar crystals. We tried to get it out of the pot, but we could not get it out, so we used a knife and I ate the bits. It was sticky, crunchy and sweet. What's next? We looked at the crystals under the magnifying glass and they looked amaaaaaaziiiiing! They were JAGGEDY and BUMPY. The surfaces of the crystals were SHARP and FLAT. My favourite crystal in my crystal book is calle BLUE GREEN SMITHSONITE. It can be found in the United States, Australia, Greece, Italy, Mexico and Namibia.