Tag: Chemistry

How dangerous is a Christmas Tree, when it has been inside drying for 3 weeks?

My Husband is against having real candles on our Christmas tree. I always had real candles on our Christmas tree when I was a child, so I have been complaining about my loss of atmosphere at Christmas, by having to live with artificial lights on our tree.

So he needed arguments, to defend his opinion. So as usual, he watched a million youtube movies and read a million articles about the subject.

And of course he came to the decision, that we had to try out the fire threat ourselves. We had to do an experiment. So this year we would not go to a workshop and make things out of the tree trunk, but set fire to it, and see how quickly it would burn. Real quickly, was the answer. With 5 m high flames.

The Medical Museion – The Body Collected

For a few years we have wanted to go to The Medical Museion. They have actual body parts in formaldehyde, you can see close up.

Biology and Chemistry is a great interest of our children, and they had so many questions to the guide.

We had pre-ordered a children friendly tour of the exhibition “The Body Collected”.

They have a large collection of bones affected by different illnesses.

We try to show our children all aspects of life, so that they do not grow up with tabus, shame or go around wondering about things, that they do not dare to ask us. They have become very good judges of what they are uncomfortable with and say:”I do not want to see that” and just go on.  It is healthy to learn to question “that is just how it is” when the doctor orders you antibiotica or other situations in life, where you do not think you have a choice.

 

 

 

 

 

After the tour, we went around in the museum on our own. The cellar had a very exiting exhibition “Min the Gut” where you could read about the importance of the stomachs bacteria flora and the research done during the past few hundred years.

There also was a Pill Machine where you could answer a line of emotional and dietary questions, to go to a machine where it would give you the right amount of medicine and guidelines to treat your ailments. It was a way to show you the combination of medical and holistic treatment.

On the other floor, just by the entrance, there was a game, where you could play roulette, gambling with your age. You could get good or bad body parts and we had a lot of fun. I managed to turn 101 years old, so I won.

We made a Corn Starch Monster

If you have some old speakers lying around, a good way to say goodbye to them, is making a Corn Starch Monster on them.

Maizena (corn flour) or Potato Starch works well. Mix it with water until it becomes a liquid base.

Then pour the mixture on the speaker and start it on a low frequency, around 20 Hz. The Starch will then start dancing.

The water and cornstarch mixture is a non-Newtonian fluid, and this means it behaves very oddly. You can pick it up, and if you keep moving it about so it’s under stress, it stays solid. But as soon as you let it rest, it goes back into a liquid.

Electrolysis of water and salt, 9v battery, 2 screws and an elastic

“Can you take a water molecule apart?” the children asked. “Yes you can, but you have to use Electrolysis”, my husbond said.

The talk came from talking about, how much Hydrogen there is in the universe. Actually 73% of the universe consists of Hydrogen and the children wondered why it doesn’t explode.

They also wondered why water puts out fire, when it contains that flammable Hydrogen.

So we decided to try separating hydrogen and oxygen from water through Electrolysis.

Hydrogen is released by the minus pole, also called the cathode.
Oxygen (oxygen) is released at the plus pole, also called the anode.