Today, my "mad scientists" used our kitchen lab to make goop. The formula is to combine 1/2 cup cornstarch and 1/4 cup water, stir until it has a goopy consistency and then add a few drops of food coloring. We put the goop in a plastic bag so the kids could "smoosh" it.
If you're wondering why on earth we would make such a concoction, we did it as part of K's "Science in Action" badge for Girl Scouts. As it turns out, she wasn't the only one interested in playing with the goop :o). All of my "students" got the mini-lesson on different states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Funnily enough, adding the solid (cornstarch) with a liquid (water) makes something that isn't really covered by those three designations and, thus, is called goop.
Later Days!
Kelly
6 comments:
You're such a good teacher! :)
I went to my niece's Science and Math Night at her school earlier this week, and one of the stations was Oobleck, aka goop. It was cool! It's always nice to incorporate Dr. Seuss!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oobleck
Many thanks, Mandy, but I don't deserve the compliment--I don't do the fun stuff nearly enough. But then, not ALL of life is fun, is it? Krispy Kreme helps with those times, though!
Susan, It's very nice to get a comment from you! Thanks for dropping by to read the nitty-gritty, riveting details of life at Chez Adams :o).
Okay--believe it or not, I just had a similar chemistry lab. We made POLYMERIC FLUIDS by combining 1) Elmer's Glue and Borax
and
Experiment 2) vinyl alcohol and sodium borate.
It was the Slime and Silly Putty lab.
You can tell them that they are cross-linking polymers! Polymers are AMORPHOUS SOLIDS, --a solid whose structure is not ordered or crystalline. So, I guess (if I understand my lab work correctly) It's an amorphous solid, sub-categorized as a polymeric fluid? Hmmmmm...maybe I need to ask my instructor about that...
whew--I'm tired now. that's all I had.
What fun!!
T,
Thanks for the comment and the explanation, but I think my kids will have to be satisfied with my uber-technical "goop" explanation--LOL! I *have* to ask...are you someone I know in real life?
All4memories,
It *was* fun but it had to go in the trash today b/c the plastic bag started to leak!
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