Fall color walk

I just needed an excuse to post more gorgeous pictures of fall colors. I think the kids are beginning to think I live with the camera around my neck because I need to bring it every time we step outside.

Red berries

Orange sky

Yellow leaves

Green apple gourds

Brown Squirrel

White pumpkins

White moon in a black sky

Painted Lady Butterfly

I spent all summer trying to capture a butterfly to no avail. I am getting into the habit of bringing my camera whenever I step out of the house as I always seem to find something to take a picture of on the way back home from dropping the girls off from school.

Not only was I able to take these gorgeous photographs, I have 3 minutes of video footage of this little butterfly trying to tenaciously cling to those flowers while the wind was blowing. It is pure awesomeness!

Fall Nature Walk – Trees

I’m entering this post into ABC’s and 123’s Saturday Show and Tell and for The Magic Onion’s Friday’s Nature Table.

We had one sunny 70 degree day in the middle of a few weeks of cold and rainy days. We took advantage of the beautiful day to go on a nature walk, snap some pictures, and collect some leaves.

We found red berries on our first tree.

Beautiful green, yellow and red leaves on our second tree

These were the leaves from the above tree

orange- colored leaves on our third tree

This low tree/bush was both green and red with berries

Leaves from the above tree

I just love the golden and rust color of this tree in the middle of two green trees.

Tree sap from a tree I forgot to take a picture of. The tree was mostly devoid of leaves and we were pleasantly surprised to see the tree sap.    We were also surprised that it was hard and not sticky at all.  It must have been there for a while and dried on the bark.  We were able to take some home with us.

Two of the girls are pretending to pick apples off an apple tree

Electromagnetism

It’s been a while since we actually did any science experiments, but recently I bought a magnet science kit that was only $7 (at a Tuesday Morning store). It was called Power of Magnets from Think Box so we decided to play with it last night.

I try really hard not to buy science kits unless I think they are worthwhile. This kit contained 3 ring magnets and a stand for them, a horseshoe magnet and a bar magnet, a metal bar and copper wire, a compass and a small toy ball maze and a ruler and piece of felt.

We first played with the ring magnets on the stand.  Depending on which way you stack the rings, they either stick together (because opposite charges attract)  or float on top of each other (because like charges repel each other).

After the girls played with the different magnets for a while and doing some of the simple magnet tricks, I decided to make an electromagnet. An electromagnet is a type of magnet which is created only by the flow of electric current that is applied to it. Because the copper wires connected to the battery got really hot, and sometimes created a spark if they shifted off, I decided to make this one simply a demonstration for them.

It’s a lot easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part was keeping the wires attached to the battery. The tape didn’t hold very well.

We took the metal bar that came with the kit, wrapped the copper wire tightly around it and attached each end of the wire to each end of a C-battery with tape

It was pretty cool to see that it worked.

According to Wikipedia

A wire with an electric current passing through it, generates a magnetic field around it, this is a simple electromagnet. The strength of magnetic field generated is proportional to the amount of current.

Current (I) through a wire produces a magnetic field (B). The field is oriented according to the right-hand rule.

In order to concentrate the magnetic field generated by a wire, it is commonly wound into a coil, where many turns of wire sit side by side. The magnetic field of all the turns of wire passes through the center of the coil.

The main advantage of an electromagnet over a permanent magnet is that the magnetic field can be rapidly manipulated over a wide range by controlling the amount of electric current. However, a continuous supply of electrical energy is required to maintain the field.

Would you like to make your own electromagnet?  There’s some easy instructions for an electromagnet over at Science Bob’s website using a battery, thin-coated copper wire, and a steel nail and some paper clips.

Pollination Station

There’s something amazing that happens when you observe nature first-hand. You could read about nature’s processes in a book, see it on film, check out someone’s blog, but nothing, absolutely nothing, beats observing it yourself.

I’ve been trying to pay a visit to my morning glories every day. The leaves aren’t doing so hot, mostly because there was a few days I forgot to water it, and then the Asian beetles were munching on them, but the flowers themselves seem to be thriving quite nicely.

Sadly, my two older girls miss out on seeing the bees visiting the flowers. I MUST remember to take them out Saturday morning to watch the bees. I did video tape a bit of it, but it’s still not going to be the same experience as watching them up close, seeing the pollen stick to their back legs, and watching it drop off as they move from flower to flower. A-MA-ZING!

It was fascinating to watch the carpenter bees at work.

I’m also becoming quite comfortable getting up close and personal to see the action inside the flowers. It’s not scary when you realize that the bees are more interested in the flowers than they are of you.

Facts about Bees

Just flowers

Black-eyed Susans

Water lilies – I found these lovelies at the Renaissance Fair we went to two Saturdays ago.

The perfect morning glory, found, in all places, my backyard.

CSI games at Ruff Ruffman

My 7.5 year old daughter loves exploring PBS Kids website Fetch with Ruff Ruffman. She found a couple of neat crime scene games to play. Being a former forensic scientist, this is a cool little dry lab for kids to understand the basics of crime scene analysis.

Squeak Sneak


CSI Tugboat Thug

CSI Hat Snatcher

They include a hairs and fibers match game using pictures magnified 250 times to their original size, DNA analysis with comparisons of the electropherogram data (my specialty way back when) and fingerprint comparisons. Kids must eliminate suspects based on the clues they find. I think these are excellent little games for little scientists.

You can watch the full episode of CSI Ruff on PBS Kids Go (video links). Click on the tab at the left for Shows, then Click the Ruff Ruffman Dog, then find the CSI Ruff full episode.

Want an hands on forensic science experiment to conduct at home? Try the experiment we did from Fetch called Forensic Chemistry – Identify the mystery substance.

Properties of matter – liquids

We repeated this experiment on properties of matter from At Home Science.

We didn’t have a fancy test tube holder for our test tubes, so I fashioned them out of modeling clay.

Materials

• 3 test tubes or narrow glass containers
• Hot tap water
• Ice water
• 3 different colors of food coloring
• Supersaturated salt solution – boil a cup of water and add salt by a teaspoon at a time and stir to dissolve. Keep adding until you the salt no longer dissolves even with stirring. Let cool.  You can talk about how heat allows for more dissolving of the solute (the salt), so it can “hold” more dissolved salt.  *

Procedure -

1. Add cold water to the first tube, hot water to the second tube, and the salt solution to the third tube.  Label your tubes (ours had color coded lids so the blue lid was for the cold water, the red lid was for the hot water, and the yellow lid was for the salt water).
2. Add a drop of food coloring at the same time to each tube and observe what happens.

You can see that the food coloring diffuses (spreads out) the fastest in hot water, the next fastest in the cold water, and doesn’t diffuse at all in the salt water.

Why does the food coloring diffuse faster in hot water than in cold water?

The molecules of the liquid move faster at higher temperatures, therefore diffusion happens at a faster rate when the liquid is heated.

Why doesn’t the food coloring diffuse in the supersaturated salt water?

Because the salt water is more dense than the liquid food coloring, therefore the food coloring just floats on top.

* You can use the leftover supersaturated salt solution to make salt crystals (you can use the same procedure as with growing sugar crystals)-

Nature study – bird, toad, crab

This bird was sitting on my deck and I was able to snap a picture of it through our window. I’m not sure what kind of bird it is yet, I have to check our bird guide. It is pretty cool that I caught it at just the perfect angle to see the profile of it.

We inherited a toad from the neighbor boy down the street, so we get to watch him grow. We opted not to grow tadpoles this year as last year it was really time and labor intensive for me.

The same neighbor boy brought over his new hermit crab for us to observe.

Numbers in nature – Flower petals

These are a few of the flowers we’ve found in our neighborhood nature walks. I think I might try to visit a flower shop to get pictures of other numbered flowers.

1 petal flower

Three Petal Flowers

Four Petal Flowers

Five Petal Red and White Petunia

Six Petal Red Asian Lily

Eight Petal Clematis

Multi-petal Gerbera Daisy (no I didn’t count, but it’s over 40).

Here’s a great flower shape identifier.