Science Fair Fun

So January in our house tends to be science fair month. Science fair is okay but man trying to help getting three projects done is hard. It also doesn't help when you have deadlines being moved and kids who forget that it is due until the day before. Yeah fun times. 

This year James decided to do work with electro-magnets. I let Christian take the lead on this one (as well as on all others) seeing as he knows a lot more about electro magnets than I do. James was trying to see how powerful he could make the magnets and did that by using extra batteries and extra coils of wire wrapped around a nail. He would then see how many paper clips he could lift with his new magnetized nail. 

 James had a ton of fun and even though he only gave us two days notice to get this project done.

Laine on the other hand was prepared for this project. She started a couple weeks before, she was also the one who we had a clear due date on.  Laine decided to see how long fruit could power a clock, much like a potato clock.

 Laine tried oranges, pears, apples, onions, peppers, bananas, and several other items I can't quite remember to see what powered the clock the longest and with the strongest current.

To her surprise the apple and not the orange was the winner.

Finally we come to Eve, we thought Eve's project was the last one due and were making plans to test some of her neighborhood friends about the power of taste. Eve's plan was to blindfold people have them smell something, like peppermint, then eat vanilla ice cream. She wanted to see if they could identify what flavor of ice cream they were eating.

Unfortunately about ten days before the due date while we were getting the family ready for bed Eve came in and said, "I have a problem." We asked what it was and then the tears started, through the tears we found out that her science project was due the next day and she just found out today.

Seeing that the whole family knew what her project was supposed to be thus eliminating them as viable test subjects. As it was after eight we had to come up with something new and exciting. Again Christian stepped in to rescue a project. He came up with the idea to use some different foods and blindfold Laine and James. At first they would be both blindfolded and plug their noses and try to identify the food they were eating. After the did this once they then unplugged their noses and tried the foods again, being able to smell the foods this time and taste them.

 Here experiment seemed to be a success. Both kids were able to identify more foods correctly after they had smelled them. And Eve was only up till 10:30 or so finishing her project board.

'The next morning Christian thought he would be nice and drive the kids to school rather than take them to the bus stop. While driving Eve's voice comes from the back of the car, "Oh, um this paper here says that I just had to tell them how I was going to do my experiment." Yup, fun times.

So that was our science fair adventure. I am glad it is done, we have our pretty green participant ribbons displayed now and most the project boards have found their way to the recycling bin, so until next January I bid science fair adieu.