"Mom, I have to do a science project and it's due tomorrow."

Has this ever happened to you? It happened to me yesterday. I had other plans but they fell by the wayside and the rest of my day was spent helping Nathaniel with his project. After hearing the news that forever altered my day, there was some yelling and some tears. Once we calmed down a bit we got to work figuring out what his project would be. Luckily, we already have some books of experiments to give us some ideas. Nathaniel said he already had a project and that it was to see the effect of light on plants. I told him that that project would take weeks and that we had to find one that we could do in one day. We tried making a light switch with parts from a science kit he had but the bulb burned out, plus I didn't like the idea of sending him to school with something so volatile. We tried a sunset in a jar but the results didn't impress me. We even tried a solar eclipse demonstration but I decided that was lame. I found a Kinetic Energy kit of Nathaniel's and I considered building a car that runs on kinetic energy, but, like some of the others would be more of a demonstration rather than an experiment. In that same kinetic energy kit there was a book with a handful of experiments and I found one that was perfect. We filled 3 bottles with warm water and recorded the temperature. Then we covered each with tinfoil, woolen sock, and a cotton sock respectively. Then we put them on the porch for 15 minutes to cool. After that we measured the temperature again to see which one cooled the least. Turns out that the woolen sock was the best insulator.
The experiment part over, now it was time to display our findings. Nathaniel brought home a poster board so at least we didn't have to worry about that. I had Nathaniel type up the Question, Hypothesis, Experiment, Data, Conclusion, and even a bit on Insulation in general. Couple that with some pictures I took during the experimenting and there you have it: a cool science project!


I hope this wasn't boring to read. I wouldn't even have posted again so soon but this was a big part of my day yesterday and I put a lot of work into it so I feel I should share.