Virtual Science Fair

We are on Spring Break this week and planning to stay close to home for this vacation. Life has been so busy and complicated, planning another trip out of Beilun seemed like a daunting task this month.

And we think we think we are busy! While we are here plugging away learning Chinese and balancing work and potty training and exercising and keeping Milan alternately well-rested and tired-out, some people have so much more on their plates. My friend, Susan, is a NASA scientist, the mother of two pre-school aged boys, a champion of women in science, an advocate for breast cancer awareness, a promoter of breast cancer research, and she raises awareness about inflammatory breast cancer. While she does all this she has been fighting that aggressive form of breast cancer for the past three years. In solidarity with her fight, I and other blogging friends around the world are holding a Virtual Science Fair by doing some fun science with our kids and posting the stories for Susan. She is an inspiration and a friend. Today I am sending big bloggy hugs to support her fight against this disease.

Click this picture to visit the other Virtual Science Fair projects!

I found my inspiration for this science day in a short podcast I heard recently about Darwin and his interest in how plants might travel from one continent to another. Darwin and his butler filled a bathtub full of salty ocean-like water and threw in some vegetables to see if they could float long enough for an ocean crossing. Then they threw in some seeds, waited to see how long they could float, then planted the seeds to see if they would still germinate. And they did. Radish seeds germinated after floating for 42 days. Asparagus seeds floated for 85 days and still germinated. Then Darwin's son (who was 8-years-old at the time) had the idea that birds could float, so maybe they could also transport seeds. So they fed seeds to a bird, shot the bird and let it float in the bathtub for a month, then opened it up and planted the seeds. And, you guessed it, they germinated.

I love this whole story of Darwin and the bathtub and his son's contribution to his research. Tim had the idea of doing a density experiment with Milan, so I combined the two ideas and here is what we did. But without any dead birds.

We gathered various items from outside and around the house. Then we made a data collection spreadsheet and Milan made his predictions for each item on the list: will it float or will it sink?


Next, Milan had to figure out where we could conduct our experiment. He first suggested the fish bowl, then his bed, then the sink (almost there) and finally the bathtub. We filled it up with water and tossed in the seeds, leaves, plastic animals, and other various things into the tub.

After each replicate he recorded his results on the data sheet.


Is it too intense for a two-year old to have a data collection sheet and to record data? He has two scientists for parents, what do you expect? We can't have sloppy science around here! He seemed to understand the process and thought it was pretty fun. In fact he was ready to run around the house, grab everything that wasn't nailed down, and throw it into the tub.

Experimental aftermath

But then we moved on to experiment number 2, completely unrelated. But as Tim the Chemistry teacher knows, science is always more exciting when something blows up. So we did the good old baking soda and vinegar trick.


Milan measured out the baking soda into the container, then added 150ml of concentrated vinegar. He was completely shocked at what happened, the fizzing, the bubbling, the mess!

Initial shock - what just happened?

"Let's do it again!" as he went a got a bigger container from the kitchen, so we doubled the measurements.


And again! This time in a bottle with a narrow neck so the bubbles will fizz out the top!

We used up all the vinegar and baking soda (something we can only buy in Shanghai, by the way! I didn't bring out the second box I have in the pantry for cooking), but Milan was not finished experimenting.

Here he is explaining his next experiment to me

"What if we mix orange juice and apple juice?" he suggests. Okay, lets try it!

Oh, nothing exciting. "How about orange juice and vinegar?"


No fizzing there. "How about..." we had to put an end to his experimentation excitement before he used up all of our pantry supplies, but he was definitely turned on to chemistry! Tim promised to do more chemistry experiments and demos in the near future.

Go Science!

Go Team WhyMommy!