Human Body!

I had a blast with this meeting! It was one of those nights where the kids were (relatively) well behaved, I had more parent volunteers than I hoped for AND all the experiments worked!  Plus, they're super easy.

We had 4 stations: Taste, Heart, Eyes and Reflex (aka Nerves and Muscles).  With groups of about 5 kids, we were able to rotate stations every 7 or so minutes, with Heart taking the longest.  We did finish early (only took about 45 minutes total), but honestly, I think I needed a short meeting anyway.

Levers of Destruction! Trebuchets, Catapults and Jaws!

This "lesson" was specifically targeting the Nova Engineering Module. As an engineer, I'm a little disappointed they focused solely on levers, so I tried to make it as interesting as possible.  When you're dealing with kids age 6-11, destruction makes things interesting!  We were able to review the three types of lever, while having a snack and shooting paper balls and ping pong balls.

Oil and Water DO Mix!

I started down this path because one of my scouts, H, was extremely interested in chemistry.  H was a 3rd grader Bear Scout who was asking me very insightful questions about how chemicals come together.  I had that in mind when I found a recipe for "Bubble Dough".  Just making Bubble Dough wouldn't cut it as a STEM Den meeting, so I combined it with an intro to polar and non-polar molecules, as well as the Color Changing Milk from Steve Spangler.

STEM Den Year 2

Well, as you can see, I was busy last year, since I haven't posted in a very long while.  My quick summary of STEM Den is this: a dozen kids showed up for the first meeting in my not-nearly-big-enough living room.  The boys were a wee bit distracted by the degus running around their cage, but enjoyed the color separation from the leaf color chromatography experiment. 

The Colors Inside - Photosynthesis and Paper Chromatography

My education has spanned a larger than average corner of the STEM world.  I have a BS in Biology (from an Engineering School), a MA in Environmental Biology and Ecology (from a Liberal Arts School) and an ME in Biological and Chemical Engineering (from a Science School).  So when I saw this experiment combine plant biology and separations, I got a little excited.  I tried to do the extraction version, where you place torn up leaves in acetone or rubbing alcohol, but it takes 30 minutes to extract plus another 30-90 to separate, and with an hour meeting, that wasn't going to cut it.  Then, I tried rubbing some of the color onto a filter with a coin.  That transfer worked well, but the rubbing alcohol is a horrible solvent!  The acetone (regular nail polish remover concentrations) worked very well.  The Japanese Red Maple was my best leaf, with a red, green and yellow/orange band noticeable even on an unbleached coffee filter.