What I learned at the Science Museum

When we went to the Science Museum, these are some of the things that we saw and learned.

DRY ICE

Usually when ice transforms it first melts into water and then if you heat it the water turns to steam.  It goes from a solid to a liquid to a gas.  

Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide.  It is so cold it would actually burn you if you touched it.  Carbon Dioxide is something that we breath out.  When dry ice transforms it turns straight into steam not bothering about melting into a liquid first.  

In this exhibit small pieces of dry ice dropped into this big bowl of water so you could watch it turn to steam.  As they gave off steam each little piece was like a jet zooming around on top of the water.  The bowl was covered with a big piece of glass.

This picture show my little brother Isaac blowing air into the bowl through small holes.  This made the gas rise and swirl around. 

 BOWLING BALL DROP

At this experiment you had pull a rope down which made a big bowling ball go to the top of a tube.  Then when you released the rope the ball fell down to the bottom.  The tube was connected to another tube that had a little yellow tennis ball in it.  When the bowling ball dropped it pushed air through the tubes which pushed the tennis ball high into the air.

MATERIALS DEMONSTRATION

At this demonstration a lady was using lots of different and interesting materials in lots of different ways.

This material is called D3O.  It is very squishy but quite hard and unbreakable.  It can be used to make knee pads or phone covers or anything that could protect something.

Here I am wearing a jacket that has D3O inside.  So if I fell off a bike or something onto my back, the jacket would protect me.  Even through the material was so stiff and hard the jacket was still very comfortable to wear.

Next she showed us how much pee you could fit into a nappy.

Isaac and I got to hold the nappy as the woman poured 2 cups of pee in.

At the end she showed us the inside of the nappy where there are lots of gel crystals that absorb the pee.  She said that she bet that nobody there had seen the inside of a nappy before.  But me and my brother said that actually we had from the time that our dog Mochi ate the baby's nappy. YUCK!!!

Next she burned a compact disc with a flame until it got really, really hot and soft.  Then she blew into it and made a big bubble.

Electrical Circuits

There was a section where you had to complete all these challenges to do with electrical circuits.  

In the first one if you could make a complete circuit (which means there are no gaps so the electricity flow around it freely) the lightbulb would go on.

Mum said I couldn't cheat and look at the answers so I had to work really hard and keep trying until I finally worked out how to get all 3 light bulbs going at the same time.

Next I worked out how to get one of the fans going in a circuit that you needed to complete and when you completed it a fan would start buzzing round and round.