Day 53

16th December 2021

Forage

There was no surf today, so Liam went for another mushroom forage with a mate.

I’m always so surprised by the variety of mushrooms they find! We’re waiting on a book to identify them which terrifies me no end because I’m still very nervous to eat anything not bought from the store.

We tried to buy the mushroom turkey tail but it’s sold out! Liam thought he found it today. He posted his picture online but someone said it’s not a turkey tail. 🙁

This is the one we thought was a turkey tail mushroom. If you google turkey tail, it looks JUST LIKE this. (Which only strengthens my fear of eating unknown mushrooms).

Tinker Crate

Our science box arrived!

We were excited to open our Tinker Crate, to see what we got.

Spinning Science!

Circuits

We started with a breadboard which has strips of metal that run underneath the board and connect the holes on top of the breadboard.

The energy flows from the battery, to the motor and then back to the battery.

When we ran the energy directly from the battery to the motor it spun fast.

This is the fastest it can go.

When we added resistors, the energy then had to run through the resistors before it reached the motor, and this decreased the energy flow delivered to the motor, making it spin slower.

This was the slow setting.

High & low. I get it! 😂

Mila built the circuit.

Centrifugal Force

Once we had completed our spinning box it was time to learn about centrifugal force and then test it out with some cool art.

To learn about centrifugal force we had to turn to Newton’s first law of motion which states,

an object will keep on moving in a straight line, unless a force acts on it.

In our scenario, when the blobs of paint begin to spin, they are forced outwards away from the central axis.

The other example used was to imagine you’re riding in the back seat of a car and the driver suddenly goes around a corner. You’re thrown toward the outside of the curve.

The car has turned a corner beneath you. Your body will continue to keep going straight until you bump into the closed door of the car, which is the force, which in turn pushes you around the corner.

We then tested this theory further by rolling a ball and then applying force by hitting it with a ruler which made it change direction.

Yep. Newton was right! 😉

Art

We started with blobs of paint. We noticed the paint slid directly outwards from its origin.

Once we’d done a few & seen the effects, we changed our designs and the force created really cool pictures.

They had so much fun doing these and learnt a lot.

Magic Glass

Liam gave them a challenge.

He said they had to get the ball into the open glass without touching the ball with their hands and without using one glass as a scoop to transfer the ball.

I’ll let him explain.

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeLo-ZpJavs

Dad explains the rules – Mila figured it out with lightning speed!

Lunch

Linc made tofu scramble for lunch & Mila made a pasta.

Soon after lunch, I discovered a double booking in our schedule which resulted in me loosing my block of free time, I had a small meltdown. 😭😭🥱🥱🥱🥱

It wasn’t my finest moment & I cow cried big fat tears to Liam, who managed it well I thought. I suppose it was comical. (I hid this episode from the kids).

I have so many projects on & Christmas is breathing down my neck & I don’t feel ready. I was really relying on that time.

But mostly, I’m just very, very tired.

Ah, then I dried my eyes & took the kids to the pool to meet friends, because when you have kids, the show must always, always, go on!

Early night tonight! 😴😴😴