Scientist Pin

Surprise, surprise. This was fairly easy. Also fun. You need to collect materials in advance - almost everything can come from the recycle bin. We did this on a school snow day when my kids were driving me crazy. It all went so well I organized it again for the whole den. If you do it for a group, practice first, and have enough stuff so a couple of kids can do it at the same time.

The handbook makes several suggestions for each requirement. You only need to do one for each. Do water experiments in the basement or garage or outside - they're messy. Anything using balloons and water winds up as a water balloon fight. #9, #10, and #11 are fast and easy and don't need any real setup.

Note also: the Ann-Arbor Hands-On Museum runs overnight camp-ins for dens at the museum where they do either the Geologist, Engineer, or Scientist pins throughout the school year. Register early they fill up fast. There is a fee per kid. You can learn more from their website www.aahom.org. See this webpage for the programs for Scouts on 11/03/03..

#1. Show how Bernoulli's principle works. Of the two choices for this, the second one with the match and the business card works every time, but is not really neat. The one with the thread spool works if the hole in the center isn't huge and if you make a fix, and it is cool. A spool with thread on it can be used - tape or a rubber band keeps thread from unwinding. Use cardboard from the back of a recycled cereal or food box. Now, about the fix. The object is to lift the cardboard off the table by blowing down on it through the center of the spool. You get a low pressure area coming out the hole where the spool and the cardboard meet because you are blowing the air out of that space. Surrounding higher pressure air under the cardboard is supposed to push against the spool, lifting it. But you don't have any pressure between the cardboard and the table, which defeats you. The straight pin standing upright on its head is supposed to take care of this, but it usually doesn't give you enough air space under the cardboard square. To correct it, you need a taller air space between the cardboard square and the table. Put stacks of pennies or a roll of tape laid on its side between the cardboard square and the table so regular air pressure gets underneath.

#2. Show how Pascal's Law works. Balloons work if you don't turn on the faucet too hard. Or collect 2 or 3 frozen juice cans and punch nail holes as shown in the picture. The hot water bottle trick works if you have a water bottle, any tubing and some duct tape; it makes a drowning mess, because they jump on it.

#3. Show in 3 different ways how inertia works. This was easy. Do any 3 of the 4 in the book. If you do the one with the egg, do it on a cookie sheet so you don't have raw egg accidently everywhere. After you use the hard boiled egg here, peel it and use it for the egg-in-a-bottle trick in #4.

#4. Show the effects of atmospheric pressure. Dramatic. They had a blast with the egg-in-a-bottle trick. Make extra hard boiled eggs so the kids can do it again. For a narrow-mouth bottle, buy a half-gallon of orange juice in a glass bottle (Tropicana, I think). Also try the cardboard frozen juice can with lid experiment; it's easy and can't fail. They love the egg in a bottle trick, every time.

#5. Show the effects of air pressure. Easy. Use a 1-liter pop bottle and a small paper wad. Works every time. Kids love it.

#6. Show the effects of water and air pressure together. Another easy one.

#7. Show how fog works. We got this to work one time, but then couldn't repeat it.

#8. Explain and make crystals.

Boys who get a kit for Christmas could use that; you can pick up some simple cheap kits at Toys R Us, TJ Maxx, and various discount places.

Rock candy crystals took forever to form. They're supposed to form on the string, but the string kept floating up into a wad. Don't do it in a glass - do it in a pie pan or dish with a lot of surface area so the liquid evaporates in a few days. Instead of getting the string to hang down, you might try loosely laying the string across the mixture surface so it stays on the surface as the liquid evaporates. Use a much stronger sugar solution than the book instructs.
The recipe in the book used to be wrong - not enough sugar. Try at home before you use it with the den. I still like the coal and ink crystal garden better; recipe is still in craft books at the library. If doing sugar do 4c. sugar to 1 c. water. Also, dip the string in solution, then drag it through table sugar to get it started. Don't let boys burn themselves on hot sugar. Have lots of parent help.
The brick or coal crystal garden was cool!

Materials:

Do it in a glass or porcelain big cake pan, not metal. Brick chips are easier to get than coal; you don't have to have both things. Check a building supply business if you don't have a brick you want to chip. For coal, check the railroad tracks. Sometimes stones covered in oil look like coal, but aren't. Coal is very lightweight, compared to dirty stone chips. I don't know if charcoal would work; somebody should try it. CHARCOAL WORKS. OUR BRICK CHIPS DIDN'T WORK.
Recipe from the old handbook (copyright 1991, used through 1999)

Small bits of coal or common brick about the size of walnuts, put into a deep nonmetal dish
Around the coal - but not on top - put:
6 Tablespoons water
6 Tablespoons salt
2 Tablespoons Red ink - the kind for reinking stamp pads (green or blue works, too). It comes in a little
plastic bottle at office supply places -- Office Depot, Office Maxx, Staples, etc.
6 Tablespoons Laundry Bluing - get this at Meijers in the section where they sell moth balls, scrub
brushes, ironing board covers, clothespins. It comes in a 4 or 6 ounce plastic bottle. Hiller's
MKT in Arborland also had this item.
2 Tablespoons - Ammonia - laundry aisle of grocery store.
Do not stir. In a few days a garden of crystals will begin to grow.

#9. Show 3 different balancing tricks. This was very simple and they loved it.

#10. Show in 3 ways how your eyes work together. Easy. See the handbook.

#11. Show what is meant by an optical illusion. Easy. See the handbook. The boys loved this.

#12. Get a booklet on the care of the eyes and read it. We didn't do this.

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