Mangonel

I made a Mangonel. A Mangonel is a contraption. (here is a pic)

The Mangonel works like this. There is a spoon, you crank it down . And then you stretch the rubber band  attached to the spoon . You put ammo on the spoon. Then you release crank1.

The Mangonel was first used about 2,500 years ago. 

Gear box

I made a gear box out of Lego Technic parts . It converts slow turning in to fast turning.

Now look at the picture.

 

A is a box, it hold everything together .
B is a handle to hold the box A.
C is a crank ,I turn it with my hand ,and it turn axle D.
D turns 40teeth gear E.

E turns 8 teeth F gear witch turn G 40 teeth gear , witch is on the same axle.

F is 8 teeth F gear turns g gear , witch is on the same axle.

G is a 40 teeth gear witch turns 8 teeth H gear , witch is on the same axel as 40 teeth I gear.

H is 8 teeth gear that turns 40 teeth gear I , witch is on the same axel.

I is 40 teeth gear , witch turns 24 teeth J gear.

J is 24 teeth gear , witch turns K axel.

K is axel , axel K turns wheel L.

L is wheel.

Gears F and G are 5x faster then gear E.

Gears H and I are 5x faster then Gear G.

Gear J is 1.5x faster then gear I.

All together, wheel L is 5x5x1.5 = 38 times faster than crank C.

The brick and the ram

Today I made a battering ram,(On the left) a battering ram is a contraption that was used from 9 century BC until this very day.


If you are wondering what the science is? Well, here, energy gets storage in the pen and force goes in the wall. it was made out of wood and the top made of metal. The top was usually in the shape of a ram head which is why its named "The Battering Ram" 

 I made a cage out of Lego. I tied rope to the pen and the cage. Then each time I pulled the pen a cm farther the brick flew farther

Then I made a graph. It told me if I pull it from 0 cm to full blast where it will land. After I put a gram of weight on the pen and did full blast. It went extremely far.

Mushrooms are fungus, not a plant. Since they are not a plant they don’t exactly grow like plants. In other words they don’t need the sugar made from sunlight and carbon dioxide. As well they grow above soil, or on its food source such as a tree.

Why are we talking mushrooms? Well my brother found a mushroom, extremely huge mushroom, and we are showing you the mushroom right here in this picture.

You see the ruler? It is a foot long so the mushroom is more then half a foot. That's pretty big.

IT'S AN ALIEN! EVERYBODY RUN!

Stinky soap

Today I fizzed up soap. First, I put soap in a bowl and then, put the bowl in the microwave for three minutes then it fizzed up and got very stinky.

Last, I put it in a little longer and then it turned in to liquid soap

I spent several days at the Assategue Island in Maryland. I learnt about many animals that live there.

Wild horses come in small groups, they are very suspicious, and their poop looks like green ovals. They eat grass and drink water. When horses sleep they put one foot up, and then they put another one up.

The Maryland blue crab has blue on its claws. Male has a candle shape on its stomach, and a female has a temple shape on her stomach. You catch a Maryland blue crab by taking a hook attached to a string and then take a piece of chicken, hook it to the hook. It is illegal to keep a crab if it is smaller than 12 centimeters.

Other animals I saw: horseshoe crab, a lady crab, clam, mussel, starfish, seahorse, egret, and plankton.

Burn Gas, Burn!

Today I burned hydrogen made from chemical that was inside a bag from a military thing to heat food. My father works at a military place -- that’s how we got the bag.

First, we made a hole in the bag. We inserted a tube into the hole and sealed it with scotch tape, a kind of sticky tape. We did it so that now any gas from the bag would come through the tube. Here is the photograph of the bag and the tube.

Then, we poured some water into it. You can see the photograph how we did it.

The chemical inside the bag started to crackle. Then the bag started to puff up because the chemical and water started to react and make hydrogen gas. Also the bag started to heat up and became very hot. The water turned into steam and I saw steam coming out of the tube. Steam came out because there was strong pressure inside the bag. Here is a picture of that steam coming out.

Inside the bag were small pieces called Magnesium (MAG-NEE-ZHEE-UM). Atoms of magnesium broke up the molecules of water. And each molecule of water is made up of two atoms of Hydrogen (HI-DRO-DZHEEN) and one atom of Oxygen (OH-KSEE-DZHEEN). Magnesium took prisoners--one atom of oxygen and one atom of hydrogen. One atom of hydrogen was left. Those leftover atoms of hydrogen all got together and made up the gas hydrogen.

Hydrogen is a special gas. It burns very easily. So we took a lighter and we lit up the hydrogen gas coming out of the tube. Hydrogen started to burn and made a flame coming out of the tube.

Many years ago there was a blimp called Hindenburg and it was filled with hydrogen. There was a storm and lightning hit the blimp and the blimp burned very fast. There were many people who died. See this movie.

Our bag did not explode, but our hydrogen burned.

Boats and the Revenge of Water

The next day I made a boat out of paper. I figured out how to make it by looking at another boat. I don’t know who made it. I found it in my class room. It floated well.

The science of boat flowing is this. The boat has to be lighter than the water that it pushed out. Otherwise the water cannot carry the boat and it will down into water. And it will go -- kloplump! When I put boat on the water, the boat pushed some water away and the water decided to take revenge -- it pushed the boat back.

And then my sister took picture of my boats.

After that my sister took pictures of flowers because the flowers were pretty.

Today I made a super airplane from paper. It flew so far. First, my father got a book called “Super Paper Airplanes.” Who wrote it? Norman Schmidt. We found in this book how to make an airplane called “sky bird.” We used paper, scissors, ruler, and glue.

My father made the first airplane. He told me to make another one after that. I made the same plane as my father except I put a heavy piece of paper on the wrong. It made the plane to fall backwards. I took the whole thing off and put the heavy piece in the right place.

The science of airplane is that air force pushes more on the bottom than on the top. If air force would push the wrong way, then the gravity force would pull airplane down. If it goes the right way, it does not fall down and flies.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down!

Today I made a new experiment out of Ferric Ammonium Sulfate and potassium carbonate Na2CO3.

They reacted with each other by bubbling and making two colors: red and orange.
After that I took cobalt chloride and put it in water. It was pink. Then I put something called Ammonia. It was yellow. When they mixed, it turned Blue!

Ferric is cool8. Wrong thing.

Finally, completed our Rustling Tournament!

First, look at various chemicals we used to rust little nail:

The nails were sitting in little wells with water and different chemicals. They got a little rusted.

We then had judged the contestants, to see which chemical helped to get the nails rusted the most. and the winners are:

Ferric ammonium sulfate did the most rusting!

Congratulations to Ferric!!!! Totally awesome job, Ferric!

Remember the story about Ferric and Borax? Borax the loser got so mad that he hung himself. Now Ferric is the king of the world!

Today we started to test how different chemicals help to turn nails into rust. We mixed chemicals with water and put nails into little wells with water and chemicals. We will see in a few days which chemical helps make rust faster.

But now, here is the story:


"The molecule fight"

One day, sodium tetraborate, or Borax for short, and ferric
ammonium sulfate, also known as Ferric to his friends, were watching Naildown.
　
BORAX: beat him! Beat him YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
　
FERRIC: you know I can eat more nails then you.
　
BORAX: GIVE IT A BREAK y,you molecule!
　
FERRIC: that was lame that was really lame.
　
BORAX: I know I ………………Who wrote this script?

Today we did one experiment, and we learned about how other atoms mix together. We made a model of how molecules are made of different atoms. Atoms get hooked up together because some are missing electrons, and some have too much. If you look at this picture, the atom of Co is missing two electrons, and each of two atoms of Cl have a extra electron. So they hook up together and they're happy because they are not missing any electrons.

But sometimes when molecules meet they relize they may have better friends than another. Like on the picture below. The atoms of Cl like atoms of Na more than they like atom of Co. So they split, and from Co they go Na.

So that was paper model. Here is the experement with real chemicals. One little bottle in this picture has chemical CoCl2, another has Na2CO3.

So we (1) took one skoop of one chemical and put it into the well of the reaction plate (upper right with white stuff in it), and (2) a skoop of another chemical and put it into another well which is below the first one. And we added 10 drops of water into each well and mixed each well . Then we took two drops from each well and mixed in the third one. They reacted together and made pinkish jello. That's because they reacted into two other chemicals: NaCl and CoCO3 which is solid and makes the stuff look like jello.

First experiments with Chem-X1000

I am Science Man, Jr., SciManJr for short. I am 8 years old.

In this blog, I write my science experiments and projects.

Today I did experiments with my chemistry kit. I use chemistry kit called Chem-X1000 Science Lab.Today, February 14 2010, I started my experiments. First, we assembled the scale. Then we weighed a big paper clip. Then we weighed a penny, and a dime, and a nickel.

Here is the picture.

We found that penny was 3g 170mg, which is the same as 3170 mg.

Dime was 2g 350mg.

Nickel was heavy and we run out of half-gram weights. We used a dime, which is 2350 mg, and 2 g of weights, and the scale was 875 mg. All together, nickel is 5g 225 mg.

Next experiment was called Paper Chromatography. It is experiment number CH1 in the Chem-X1000 Manual.

We cut up sides on the top of chromatography paper, we put a marker dot on the place where we cut the paper (see the pictures), we made holes in the bottom of the paper strip. This way we made 3 strips, and spots were made with markers: blue, green, and red. And we hung them of the straightened paper clip.

Then we put three strips in a glass of water, hanging on the wire, so that only the tips of the paper strips touched the water. Here is the picture of how the strips are hanging in the glass with water.

The paint from the marker spot spread all the way up to the top of the paper and showed what colors it was made from.

My next experiment was D1 in the Manual. It was about bubbling chemicals. We got all our supplies ready. We got some table salt because it is sodium chloride, and our experiment was to break it into elements.

We mixed some water and salt. We took pencil leads and wires and attached to 9V battery. It is a normal square battery. We put the pencil leads into salty water, and we see bubbles coming out. And it smelled like chlorine. The pencil leads looked like started to burn.

My brother helped to hold one of the leads, and I was holding the other. Then my dad dropped phenolphthalein into the water, and it became purple and bubbly.