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Toddling Through the Silicon Valley

By Cheryl Bac

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About this blog: I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, home cook, marathon runner, and PhD. I recently moved to the Silicon Valley after completing my PhD in Social Psychology and becoming a mother one month apart. Before that, I ran seven marathons incl...  (More)

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Science with kids

Uploaded: Oct 30, 2019
Over the past few days spent extra time indoors due to the smoke.  If you get stuck inside due to the poor air quality or chilly weather, here are some fun science experiments to try.  We had a great time and can’t wait to try more.  

1. Walking on eggs: I honestly wasn’t expecting this experiment to work.  Could our kids really walk across a carton of eggs without breaking them?  I bought 2 cartons of eggs, to be in the safe side, as I was expecting many eggs to break.  And, even with many repetitions and some very excited kids, only a couple of eggs broke!  This was a hit.

2. Squeezing eggs: We also examined how strong the eggs were by trying to squeeze them with our hands.  And, surprisingly, we couldn’t break them!  I knew eggshells were strong, but this was quite impressive.  

3. Lemon volcanoes: I enjoy trying out variations of the classic baking soda and vinegar volcano.  This one was quite fun to do.  Who doesn’t enjoy smashing lemons (just be careful the juice doesn’t squirt in your eye).  

4. Chain reactions: Our son’s been eyeing this chain reaction Lego book for awhile.  When grandma flew out to visit us, I knew it was a great opportunity for us to buy it and try it out.  Our first chain reaction did not disappoint.  


5. Floating Ms and Ss: I was skeptical of this experiment, but it was great.  We needed to wait only a short period of time to see the Ms start to float up to the surface.  We tried both M&Ms and Skittles. 


6. Floating fruit and vegetables: What a great opportunity to make predictions.  Do limes sink or float?  How about lemons?  How about peeled cuties or bananas?  Do pumpkins float or sink?

7. Lemon battery: I was excited to make a battery using lemons.  Our youngest asked to buy a huge bag of limes at the grocery store, so our battery was created with limes.  We also added apples, potatoes and oranges just to see if the led continued to light up.  And it did!
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Comments

Posted by Great ideas!, a resident of University South,
on Nov 12, 2019 at 9:50 pm

Great ideas! is a registered user.

These look like a lot of fun. Too bad I'm in between kids and grandkids right now...


Posted by Cheryl Bac, a Palo Alto Online blogger,
on Nov 13, 2019 at 11:12 am

Cheryl Bac is a registered user.

Thanks! Hope you are able to enjoy them with your future grandkids.


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