How to Make Char Cloth

Char Cloth

Trying to start a fire with a spark from flint and steel can be pretty challenging.  It's hard to catch a spark and hard to work it into an ember.  An age old way of doing this is to use char cloth, Here's how to make some!

Cut some 100% cotton cloth into small squares, these are about 2"x2"and put them into a small tin or can, something fireproof.

Punch a small hole in the top of the can.  This lets gasses out, but not enough oxygen in to make fire in the can.

Heat the can on a fire.  This is a camp stove, but any fire will do.  This step should be done outside as it is pretty smokey.  You are "burning " the cloth without oxygen similar to how wood becomes charcoal.  The gas escaping the tin will burn and that's OK, it's methane gas.  Heat until it stops smoking then remove to cool.

Launch some sparks onto the char cloth and you will see small red glowing areas.  Gather up the the char cloth and the materials you mean to start on fire (here it's wood shavings from the pencil sharpener and newspaper).  

Blow and blow and blow on the bundle, the char cloth becomes redder and hotter as the embers grow. Careful...

The bundle will burst into flame!!!  We were doing this project really late at night and didn't want to have a bonfire so Dancer just set it into the barbecue grill.  To make a fire, set your bundle down and put small sticks, leaves, etc on it  Continue to blow on it and soon you'll have a raging fire

Blow Bubbles with a CD

 

Cut a CD in half and separate the two layers of the CD.  Using the clear plastic half, make a hot spot by moving a lighter around in a circle on the CD a couple of inches in diameter.  When it bulges up on the top, blow at it like you would a soap bubble wand. 

 

The hot spot blows up just like soap bubbles.  These deflate quite quickly. 

 

 

The bigger the spot you heat up the bigger the bubble.

 

Flamin' Hot Orange Skin

The skin of an orange, or any citrus fruit, contains oils.  We have probably all seen the oils spray out of the skin when you peel an orange.  The oil is flammable.

 

 

 Squeeze or tear a chunk of orange peel by a flame...

 

And watch the oils ignite as they pass through the flames.

Red Hot Balloon

Heat capacity of water.

Water is able to absorb a lot of heat.  In this experiment we held an empty inflated balloon over a flame and it popped immediately.  We then held an inflated balloon, 1/4 filled with water in the flame.  No matter how long we held the balloon in the flame it wouldn't pop.   

 

We had the balloon in the flame so long it got soot marks on it.

 

The balloon is safe because water is able to absorb the heat from the flame so the balloon doesn't melt and tear.  I have heard you can hold the balloon over the heat until the water starts to boil and it still won't break.  We only held it for a few minutes.

Pinterest Busters - Blow Up A Balloon With Pop and Pop Rocks

Here is the hypothesis:  Put a balloon on the top of a pop bottle filled with Pop Rocks and the combination of the Pop Rocks and the carbonation will inflate the balloon. 

 

 

The first hurdle was to get the Pop Rocks in the balloon.  Pop Rocks are by nature a bit damp and they didn't want to slide down the funnel into the balloon.  A little coaxing with a chop stick got them in there.

 

 

Put the balloon on the top of the bottle without spilling any of the Pop Rocks into the pop until the balloon is securely on the top.

 

 

Lift the balloon up so the Pop Rocks drop into the bottle.

 

 

Then sit back and watch the action unfold.

 

 

 

 

It popped up quite quickly, although it didn't technically blow up the balloon to its full potential.  Also, since Spark's nose is growing here, we can not tell a lie, Spark blew the balloon up a few times to make it less stiff before the experiment.  So would we have had as much inflation on a fresh balloon, maybe.  I wouldn't use this technique to blow up balloons for a party but, as a parlor trick, it was entertaining. 

 

 

 The next step:  We have all heard that if you eat Pop Rocks and drink pop your stomach will explode.  Without any hesitation, glasses were lifted and they proved this theory wrong.  We waited but, no guts flew anywhere.  Disappointed or relieved? 

Pinterest Busters - Cut Glass With String and Fingernail Polish Remover

 If you want to get boys excited, start something on fire - inside the house.  The next Pinterest Buster was to cut glass with a string and fingernail polish remover. 

Glass bottles are need for this and if you don't regularly have glass bottles you need to go and buy some.  We got a Starbucks ice coffee, a couple Snapples and a six pack of green, San Pellegrino water bottles.  Next you need to convince the lady at the check out that she can bag them because you aren't going to drink them now, they are for an experiment.  Our checkout wanted to leave them out so bad that we ended up explaining the whole string/fingernail polish remover process to her while holding up the rest of the line.  I wonder if she went home and tried this?

Also needed are fingernail polish remover with acetone, ice, matches, yarn and a non plastic dish.

Drink whatever was in the bottles (we found out Dad is the only one of us who like Pellegrino, thanks for drinking all those Dad) and wash them out.

Fill half the sink with cold water and ice.

Cut a piece of yarn to wrap around the bottle a couple of times.  Wrap the string around where you want the bottle to be cut.

 

Carefully slide it off and soak it in the dish of fingernail polish remover.  Slide the yarn back on the bottle. 

 

 

On the other side of the sink, because you don't want to get excited and drop the bottle in your dining room, light the string on fire.  Let it burn and then.....

 

 

set it in the cold water.  Instantly, from the extreme temperature differences, it will break where the string was. 

 

 

This was ultra cool.  We were able to get the bottle to break but, not cleanly enough to make the bottles useable for glasses.  Almost all of the bottles also had a crack of varying degrees down the side of them.  We did try wrapping the string around the bottle less times and letting it burn for different lengths of time before putting them in the water but we still didn't get the perfect combination.  I think that with enough experimentation this will work.  If you do get a nice clean cut around the bottle the edges supposedly can be sanded to be smooth. 

 

Did we bust the pin?  No, it worked, and on top of that, it was exciting! 

Pinterest Busters - Expanding Shrinking Gummy Bears

Hours can be spent looking through all the enticing pins on Pinterest but, do all those projects really work?  Set out to find the answers, the hmmmschooling mom and ourselves did some Pinterest Busting.

 

The first one we tackled was, do Gummy Bears really expand in plain water and shrink in salt water?

 

This one was easy, all we needed was two bowls, water, salt and Gummy Bears who were willing to jump in.

 

 

He is getting ready......

 

 

and he takes the plunge.

 

 

The Gummy bear in the plain water - he is full of bubbles and he did get a wee bit larger.  We were expecting gigantic so, while he did technically get bigger, we were disappointed.  All the other Gummy Bears were quickly devoured by the boys so we dug this one out of the trash who had fallen on the floor as our comparison.  Next time we will know to set one aside from hungry boys at the very start.

The salty bear.  He shrank, and he shrank much quicker that I had thought he would.  See the red water?  I think what really was happening was that he was dissolving.  By the time we went to bed he was gone.   The bear in the regular water was also shrinking by this time in a pool of red so he too started to dissolve, just took him much longer. 

 

Did we bust the pin?  Yes, and no.  They did get bigger and smaller but, not in the way we had hoped.  Shrinking and dissolving are really two different things.



Frog Antifreeze

Some amphibians, tree frogs for example, spend the winters hiding under matted grass or fallen leaves.  they have little protection from freezing temperatures.  Normally, when an animals cells freeze, the animal's cells and tissues are destroyed by jagged pieces of frozen water in the cells.  How do these frogs avoid a similar fate?  The frogs make their own antifreeze for their cells.  They put extra glucose, a sugar the body uses for energy, into the cells fluid.  Look below for a demonstration that shows how this works.

 

Three cups are used.  One has just water in it.  The next has one Tbsp. of water and one Tbsp. of corn syrup mixed together.  The last cup is just corn syrup.  Frog blood isn't blue, but the color makes the pictures easier to see.

The picture above is after an hour in the freezer.  The first two cups are frozen.  The corn Syrup is liquid but very thick.

The frozen water has sharp edges and long pointy crystals which would tear and destroy the frog's cells.

The mixture of corn syrup made a mushy blue slush without sharp edged to damage the frogs cells.  The cells remain viable until the frog breaks dormancy in the spring. The corn syrup didn't freeze, but a frog couldn't replace all of their body fluid with glucose and still be alive, they would sort of be embalmed. 

First The Root Grows Down

 

We are getting desperate to grow something, anything.  With the weather not cooperating we put some seeds in plastic bags with wet paper towels and hung them in the window.  I did plant some tomato seeds but those darn cats thought they looked tasty and once the second leaves came out they ate them.  Those cats are getting less popular everyday.

 

 

So far we have had a pumpkin seed sprout, a couple of peas and a sunflower.  I am wondering if we aren't getting good germination because the window is either freezing cold from the temps outside or really hot from the two days that the sun actually made a showing.

 

 

One thing that I find amazing about seeds is that no matter how you plant them, the root always grows down first, they will even turn themselves around, and then the plant then grows up.  Amazing, just amazing that every seed knows to do this.

 

Looking at these seeds with their little roots has put a song running in an endless loop in my head that we use to sing when the kids were little sprouts themselves.

 

♪ ♫ Of all you learn here, remember this the best.

Don't hurt each other and clean up your mess.

Take a nap every day, wash before you eat,

Hold hands, stick together

Look before you cross the street.

Remember the seed in the little paper cup,

First the root grows down and then the plant grows up!  ♪ ♫

The Great Egg Drop

The co-op physics class had the assignment of making a container that would keep an egg safe when dropped.  Out of a class of 10 there were some similar designs but none "eggs"actly the same. 

 

The containers were dropped from the tip top of a tall kid standing on a 12 foot ladder.  They were loud when they dropped!

 

 

Spark's design was a large cheese puff container stuffed with plastic shopping bags and then a smaller peanut butter jar stuffed with bags placed in the middle of the cheese puff container.

 

 

It was exciting as each student unwrapped their containers to see if their egg had lived.

 

 

Spark's made it through the first round.  

 

For the second round the containers were thrown at the ground as hard as the kid on the ladder could manage, which was so hard it broke some of the containers.  Spark's egg did not make it through this round.  I think his mistake was that he wrapped the egg in the plastic bag instead of nesting it in between the bags.  On the second round his egg cracked a little because it hit the hardness of the inside container. 

 

I found the whole thing sort of weird because I kept thinking of those eggs as little brains and they were shaking or abusing them like in shaken baby syndrome.  It really bugged me when one of the eggs would break.  The kids thought it was highly exciting though, which it was, I just had that little gruesome thought.

 

Potato Mummification

 

We recently did a project in which we made a potato mummy.  We actually did this to study chemical reactivity and not because we are studying Egypt but it was fun none the less.

 

 

A smaller potato, peeled and cut in half.  Pick a potato that will fit in the plastic cups you have on hand.

 

 

Mix 2/3 cup of table salt and 2/3 cup baking soda.  This is a dessicant, like those little "pillows" you find in some packaging, like pepperoni.  A dessicant is a drying and preserving agent.  The ancient Egyptians used natron, a naturally occuring mineral composed mostly of soda ash.  It had many other uses too, mostly in cleaning products and soap making.

 

 

One of the potato pieces was covered entirely with the "natron".  The other was just set in it's cup.  they are placed in a cool, dark place for a week.  Those potatoes look Spark-a-licious.  

 

 

After a week both potatoes are removed from the cups, the preserved potato was cleaned off a little.

 

The preserved potato is much lighter and is becoming hollow.  The preserving salt is dicolored and damp.  The potato looks pretty gross but it isn't slimy or moldy. 

 

The non preserved spud has a little white and orange mold on it.  The untreated potato would probably look worse but they were stored in the basement where it is pretty cold in the winter.  In the pictures you can see that the treated potato is not rotting, it's just drying out.  The point of the project, regarding reactivity, is that when moisture, heat and light are limited the potato is less able to mold and decompose.  

Water Pressure Experiment

Water pressure - the stuff that makes your head hurt if you dive down too deep in the lake. 

To show how water pressure effects the flow of water we took a milk carton and with a nail punched three vertical holes in the side of it.  Then we filled it to the top, set it on the side of the sink to see how the water would flow out of the three holes.   The top hole was unimpressive.  The second and third holes had the same distance in the water spray but the middle hole had a weaker flow shown by the fact that it was the same as the bottom hole.  If they had been the same the middle hole would have gone further because it was higher than the bottom hole. 

The farther up the carton you go, the less weight is pressing down so the lower the water pressure.

The same works with air pressure.  The air that closest to the earth has the highest pressure.  Go up in the mountains and the air gets much thinner because it has less weight pressing on it making the air pressure lower.

How To Make A Potato Cannon

Materials needed are: 

•  a hacksaw
•  shaping file or Dremmel
• 1 36 inch length of 2 inch diameter schedule 40 PVC pipe
• 1 3 to 2 inch diameter reducing bushing
• 1 14 inch length 3 inch diameter schedule 40 PVC pipe
• can of PVC primer
• can of PVC cement
• 1 3 inch coupling, one side threaded, one side smooth
• 1/8 inch drill bit
• 5/16 inch drill bit
• a lantern sparker - these are at Walmart in the camping section
• Duct tape
• 1 3 inch diameter threaded PVC end cap
• hairspray in an aerosol can - it must be aerosol not a pump spray
• bag of potatoes

 

 

First, cut off a 15" piece of 3" PVC pipe.  A hack saw works well and they are inexpensive.  The PVC is easy to cut but make sure the cut is as straight as possible.

 

The cut end is rough with lots of burrs.  Since this plastic, the edges are soft and fuzzy, not sharp like with a metal pipe.  Spark used his Dremmel and a small grinding wheel to smooth the edges.  A file would work as well. 

 

Join a 3" end with screw out plug to one end of the 3" pipe.  First, brush on some PVC primer, it is a cool purple color.  It is acetone and highly flammable so work outside.  It will also permanently stain just about everything, take care!!  Next brush on the clear PVC cement. 

 

When you connect the pieces push them together all the way, turning a quarter turn as you join them.  The cement will melt and "weld" the pieces to each other.  In the picture above the end cap, with screw out plug, has been attached as well as a 3" to 1-1/2" reducer.  A five foot section of 1-1/2" PVC pipe is being cemented to the reducer.  Let this assembly cure overnight. 

 

A sparker for a gas camping lantern is inserted into the screw out plug.  The sparker we used need a 5/16" hole to be drilled through the plug.  The sparking assembly is secured to the plug with a nut and washer that come with the sparker.

The inside of the plug shows the flint and wheel that make a spark when the knob on the outside is spun.

The outside of the potato cannon is wrapped with duct tape so no injuries happen if the cannon splinters or comes apart.  Spark used the grinding bit on his Dremmel to sharpen the end of the cannon.

Make it sharp enough to cut a plug out of the potato when it pushed onto the barrel.

Push the potato to the bottom of the 1-1/2" barrel with a piece of old broom handle.

Spark's additional decorating.

Instructions.

Spray a two to three second shot of hairspray in the back of the cannon.  Use the cheapest hair spray.  When the can states that hair spray is explosive they mean it really, really is explosive  Quickly screw the plug in.

Spin the brass knob, there will be a loud bang and the potato plug flies about 150 yards.  Aim at about a 45 degree angle for best distance.  If you do this near a road make sure that no cars are coming.  After you are done firing the cannon for the day, shove a wet rag through it and wipe out all the hair spray.