Gunda the Dragon

These days I am busy preparing a chemistry program for young kids (age 4-9). It is inspired by a program developed and used by Navet in Borås, Sweden. They have for several years now had a program called "Do chemistry with Berta the Dragon". They start with story telling about Berta and her doing an experiment. Then they do the experiment with the kids. Afterwards they go to the laboratory and do some more experiments, after dressing up with real lab coats. They presented Berta at the Ecsite conference in Lisbon in June, and their presentation can be found here. Berta has been a huge success for Navet and they are now publishing books about her (in several languages).

I am developing a similar program to use locally, using a dragon (for now, it might be changed to a different creature), but creating my own setting and select my own experiments. I didn't want to photocopy the Navet version, rather bring to it some of my own personality and interests.

My dragon is called Gunda and she has a baby brother called Georg. Gunda loves the action of chemistry, while Georg is a bit nervous and prefers to deal with numbers. Georg is part of a math project, which is being developed by my colleague Anne. Using puppets and drama is one of the elements we wish to bring into many of our programs, because research from Britain shows that kids up to 12 gets a better learning experience when puppets are added as a learning tool.

Gunda and Georg are Tellatale puppets from The Wooden Gnome Store. I have made some modifications to Gunda to make her blow flames. If you wish to know how-to, drop me a note. On the photo to the right I am doing one of my first pyrotechnique tests. Anne is the blixtlight speed photographer here. The action takes just parts of a second, and is difficult to catch on film. The flame was four times longer at its maximum. This ought to impress the youngsters, and motivate them to learn some chemistry.

I will let you in on the details when I am finished with the whole thing. It will be launched at a school visit in Lavangen the second week of October, and at a seminar in Bodø just days later.

Update: If you wish to buy puppets, Living Puppets and Alveslottet (norwegian) are excellent sites too. Living Puppets also offer custom made puppets, if you want your own unique puppet.

"Anti-helium" at The Tonight Show

Everyone knows the effect of helium gas. Who hasn't inhaled a party balloon and had fun talking like Donald Duck? Kids today are at least familiar with this phenomenon.

At Jay Leno a couple of months ago, Josh Duhamel demonstrated the behaviour of a different gas heavier than the components of air. He described it as "anti-helium", the correct name is SF 6 (Sulfur Hexafluoride). This is a nice demonstration at science shows. The gas is harmless to people (in moderate doses), but harms the ozone layer. So please consider the risks for the environment if you wish to use this demo.

Make a glowing tomato

I just saw this amazing video made by The Shooting Eggs Production, and I can't wait to try it for myself. It does not look like a fake to me. It requires three household chemicals, match phosphorus, bleach and hydrogen peroxide. The chemicals have to be strong, though (according to a comment to the video), so take care with your hands and your eyes if you want to give it a go.

The Mentos and Diet Coke Geysir

Last week touring the local schools in the Harstad-area, I demonstrated the Mentos eruption as part of the theme solids, liquids and gases. The experiment is simple; make a tube of paper where you can stack a handful of Mentos and place a card underneath the tube. Place the tube and the card on top of an opened Diet Coke (or similar), remove the card and see the Mentos fall into the soda. Evacuate the site and watch the geysir burst into the air.

The phenomena was first demonstrated by Steve Spangler, a science educator and television host from USA, back in 2005 and has since become a TV and internet phenomena. Steve Spangler lauched a geysir reaching 5. 5 m using a 2 litre coke bottle, live on TV. TV-shows like the Letterman Show and Mythbusters has blown away multiple bottles of Diet Coke, and lots of videos showing the eruption are posted at YouTube. Even at Flickr there is a group called Planet Mentos. Today's record is 10.4 m, set by the Mythbusters. They demonstated that freezing the Mentos increased the effect, because gum arabic expands when frozen, the mentos become more porous and cause the reaction to speed up.

Although many might think it is a waste of soda and candy, there is some good science in there. Who has not seen the bubbles formed in the soda when something is accidently dropped into the glass? When using the Mentos candy, you see the extreme version of the same phenomena.

The gas is trapped in the soda due to the water molecules. When Mentos is dropped into the Diet Coke, the gelatine and the gum arabic coating dissolves and breaks the surface tension of the soda. The mesh of water molecules is disturbed and the carbon dioxide easily form bubbles. Mentos has thousands of tiny pores on their surface, and these function as nucleation sites where the gas bubbles form. As the rather heavy candy falls to the bottom of the bottle, carbon dioxide is released and the suddenly increased pressure pushes the liquid out of the bottle.

As I discovered on my tiny tour, this experiment create enormous amounts of enthusiasm and curiosity among the kids. I encouraged them and their teachers to continue experimenting with this; trying other types of soda and Mentos, other candies and heavy oval objects, and varying the number of Mentos used. Exploring which ingredients causing the effect, is scientific investigation in it's full extent. I am awaiting feedback from the kids in the Harstad area, and hope others also wish to try this fun backyard experiment.