As 2008 winds down, and we inch toward a well-deserved three week holiday at the Chronicle, it is paramount that we keep the kids engaged in the learning process. Things can get a little bit wild around here when the youngsters adopt a "Who cares?" attitude. They sit at their desks, bursting with the anticipation of Christmas, with plans to board flights bound for all corners of the globe. Even for those just staying in Warsaw, education can sometimes be the last thing on their minds this time of year. This requires me to get a little bit more creative in my presentation style and bring a touch of "showmanship" to the classroom.
The question I get the most when I introduce kids to the wonderful world of science is, "Are we going to get to blow things up?" or "Do we get to work with fire?". Far be it from me to inspire some young pyromaniacs by handing them a copy of the legendary Anarchist's Cookbook and giving them free reign in the laboratory. I will, however, break out a super cool density demonstration. Don't try this at home:
2 comments:
Polski G,
Nice demo. I had a chemistry teacher that had a box and would make small explosions with aerosolized pollen and blow perfect smoke rings to the top of the gymnasium. It was a lot of fun and a great attention getter for the kids. I wish I could get university engineering students that fired up about learning heat transfer.
I would appreciate it if you would make your own copy of the chip pan photo. It is from Wikipedia and in the public domain. I run my own web server out of my apartment and have very limited bandwidth. The way you are currently configured, each time your blog is called, your reader grabs the maximum resolution copy of this image from my server, which I don't even provide until the user clicks on the photo because it is a bandwidth hog. For the time being, I will leave the photo in place, but may have change the URL if the hotlink requests become too burdensome on my server, which will leave you with a gaping hole in your blog.
It is good to be introduced to your blog and I look forward to reading it in the future. -- Brian
Thanks a lot for fixing this. It is a great picture and I am glad to see it distributed more widely.
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