science fair

I just realized that I never posted anything further about Alex's science fair project after my initial post. Life got crazy and we barely got the thing done and presented before he left for camp.

Because he was going to be at camp during the actual science fair, the museum was very kind in letting him present early. So, a couple days before we left to take him to camp, he gave his presentation...
His experiment went well. It was really interesting to see how things turned out. Alex's hypothesis was that salt would make the best desiccant... but according to his experiment, the natron mixture did indeed make the best desiccant. I have quite a few photos of the end of the experiment but I'm being lazy at the moment.

Alex's presentation also went well. He was excited and knowledgeable about his subject.

What didn't go well was his paper. A couple of things were working against him here.... one, he hasn't done a lot of writing (something to work on for next year) and two, he was already mentally at camp when he set down to write the report. Oh well.

So, needless to say, Alex did not place at the science fair.... but he had a great time doing his project and learned a great deal from it. He's excited to work on a project for next year's science fair. Hopefully he'll take what he learned from this year's science fair and apply it to his new project.

and so it begins...

We FINALLY began Alex's science fair project yesterday. The fair is at a local museum and isn't until mid-June but since Alex will be at camp most of the month of June, he has to have it done early (the wonderful people at the museum are letting him present to the judges before he leaves for camp). June seemed so far off until I started counting up the weeks yesterday... yikes! We're going to have to work hard and fast to pull this off!

Alex became fascinated with the mummifying techniques used by the Ancient Egyptians after we mummified our royal fruit family a while back. He became intrigued by what would happen if we used different substances to dry out the "bodies". This became the basis for his science fair project. Our original "natron" mix was half salt and half baking soda. He wanted to see what would happen if we used only salt and only baking soda.

The project has changed a bit since he originally wrote it up for approval. He was originally going to use hollowed out oranges like we did for our fruit family... but we thought that those wouldn't leave us enough bulk to weigh and see a significant difference. Next we thought about apples.... but I imagined whole swarm of fruit flies taking up residence in our kitchen. So... last minute, we decided to use potatoes.

Also in his original proposal, he wanted to use sand as one of the drying agents like the Egyptians did for their first mummies. But, we never managed to acquire any sand and we needed to get started.

So, we got started. Here Alex is weighing potatoes to make sure each pan had approximately the same weight in potatoes...
Once we separated the potatoes into 5 pans worth of potatoes weighing about 8 oz each, Alex cut each potato in half to increase the surface area...
Here are the five pans waiting for their drying substances...
We determined that three cups of the substance was needed to properly cover the potatoes, so Alex measured them all out and filled the pans...
So, here's the view of our lab (formerly my kitchen)....
From left to right we've got kitty litter, the control (just potatoes), salt only, baking soda only, and 50/50 salt and baking soda mix.

We weighed all of the filled pans as well.

I typed up a few quick charts for Alex to fill out so he could keep track of his data. He also has a journal that he took notes in while we worked. This is really going to be an interesting experience for all of us!