My kids are 3 and 5 1/2. Their favourite day of the week is Friday, because it is Show and Tell day. I think that as we get olde r, we forget how interesting it is to share with others something that you are bursting to tell them. It really hooks people. I tried this concept with my grade 11 U Biology class last fall, with good results. There were a lot of things going on, so it fizzled out before the whole class did it, but I am going to try again next semester because we had some fun with it.
One of my students brought in a green, engorged caterpillar that was crawling on a tomato plant in his backyard. It was fun asking some of the teachers in school to identify it. I also asked Photogirl, who is a naturalist. She has a nature guide and made quite a good guess (without seeing it). Finally, the student did some web research on the topic and found out it was going to become a certain type of moth. The class was really into it.
As I was getting into the show and tell thing, my 5 year old was getting to the science demonstration thing. We put an egg in vinegar and let the shell dissolve. It produced bubbles right away and would spin periodically. After about a day or so, the shell was completely gone and the membrane was so tough that you could hold the egg in your hand and bounce it. Needless to say, we kept bouncing it from higher and higher until....it broke! But it was good fun and I got up to waist high before it broke. It's a perfect demonstration for cell transport (grade 11 U Biology) and quite a common one but I had never done it before.
The part II to this is that we put the shell-less egg into corn syrup and the water moved outwards, of course. The yellow bcame quite hard and it had a generally deflated appearance.
It was cool to touch and grosses out some people. You could measure the diameter of the egg before and after and/or take the mass.
My five year old was impressed with all of this and took it for her show and tell on Fridays!
One of my students brought in a green, engorged caterpillar that was crawling on a tomato plant in his backyard. It was fun asking some of the teachers in school to identify it. I also asked Photogirl, who is a naturalist. She has a nature guide and made quite a good guess (without seeing it). Finally, the student did some web research on the topic and found out it was going to become a certain type of moth. The class was really into it.
As I was getting into the show and tell thing, my 5 year old was getting to the science demonstration thing. We put an egg in vinegar and let the shell dissolve. It produced bubbles right away and would spin periodically. After about a day or so, the shell was completely gone and the membrane was so tough that you could hold the egg in your hand and bounce it. Needless to say, we kept bouncing it from higher and higher until....it broke! But it was good fun and I got up to waist high before it broke. It's a perfect demonstration for cell transport (grade 11 U Biology) and quite a common one but I had never done it before.
The part II to this is that we put the shell-less egg into corn syrup and the water moved outwards, of course. The yellow bcame quite hard and it had a generally deflated appearance.
It was cool to touch and grosses out some people. You could measure the diameter of the egg before and after and/or take the mass.
My five year old was impressed with all of this and took it for her show and tell on Fridays!
1 comment:
Hi Biobabe!
I am a relatively new Biology and Chemistry Teacher and I saw your post on Gel Electrophoresis. I teach a Forensics class and our school is recently very short on cash for Science electives. Have you ever run a gel electrophoresis from DNA extracted from... banana's, wheat germ or onions? I have some extra eco RI hanging around and I have agar and buffer... I am out of my DNA fingerprint DNA samples. Do you think it would work?
(i guess there is only 1 way to find out!)
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