-Dana

It is interesting to me that noble gases sit one column to the right of the most energetic and reactive gases – the halogens.

-Dana

I did find that the Royal Society of Chemistry has said that Toast with Honey is the best cure for afterwards and a glass of milk prior to your partying effort. That sure does seem much healthier than my suggestion over the years. Oh well!

-Dana

He wanted to make an egg, a caterpillar, a chrysalis, and a monarch butterfly which we did. He let me know that caterpillars eat their way out of the egg which I didn’t know. This’ll be a short post today.

I hope you enjoy the pictures. Let me know if you build it too. I’d love to see the photos.

- Dana

Little Buddy is still crazy about the solar system! Then again, who isn’t? He drew this in Microsoft Paint at Mimi’s house.

He does have a few persistent questions – “Why is Pluto the smallest in the solar system?” and “Why is Jupiter the biggest planet? And plus it has a big hole.” and “Nothing else.”

-Dana

So, he came up with the idea on his own to make the planets. As we made them, he told us all about each one. Some are gassy giants and some are not. He explained which were hot, etc.

Anyways, he designed it and instructed is on what to do and this is what he designed …

- Dana

An upcoming fascination of Brennan’s is Tornados, which I agree are really cool to look at but not too cool in real life for those that are unfortunate to be in one.  He has memorized the Fujita scale but hasnt quite latched on to the concept that the size of tornado doesnt dictate the strength of the wind.  That’ll be a next step. Here is a quick video of it in action:

To make a long design / science discussion short, the box is cut so that there are slits in the sides which make the tornado funnel spin as a motor on top sucks the dry ice smoke up. Email me at dana@danaedwards.com if youwant to know more about the physics of how it works. Here are a couple of photos of it in action:

We had a blast making it and hope to show it off to the grandparents for Spaghetti Night tonight and Thanksgiving Dinner soon!

- Dana

So, your first thought is probably “that flies?”  It sure does.  It’s actually pretty fast and travels a long distance, all things considered. It took all of a few minutes to build.  Needed a few things:

• Tape
• a 3×5 index card
• a straw

To build was very simple:

1. Cut the index card into three 1 in wide strips.
2. Make 1 strip into a circle and tape on the inside and outside
3. Take the other two strips and make into a circle, also taping inside and outside.
4. Cut the flexy part off the straw.
5. Attach the hoops to the straw at either end. I bent the bigger hoop a little bit so that it would sit upright.  Look at how it is attached in the first picture on the left.

Using it is pretty simple too.  Throw it hard and watch it zoom.

I’ll post a video of results tomorrow when he wakes up.

Dana

We used about-to-be recycled 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper and the same for construction paper.  The design was really simple and worked like a charm the first time we tried it.  You’ll see variants of it in the movie so use your imagination on how we came up with those.

Here is the pattern we used:

To build it: 

1. Print it out or sketch it on a sheet of paper. Index cards work well and last longer.
2. Cut along the line from the top to about the middle of the paper.  This will be the wings.
3. Cut 1/3 way in to the middle of the paper on the solid lines that come in from the outsides.  These will form the body of the helicopter.
4. Fold 1 of the thirds of the body to the back and one to the front.
5. Fold about 1/2 inch of the body up towards the wings. Secure it with a paper clip.
6. Fold one wing to the front and one to the back.

To fly it:

1. Hold it up high by the base.
2. Drop it.
3. Repeat step 1.

For those wanting to understand how it works. It’s actually pretty simple. When the helicopter falls, air pushes up against the blades, bending them up just a little. When air pushes upward on the slanted blade, some of that thrust becomes a sideways, or horizontal, push.The two opposing thrusts work together to cause the helicopter to spin.

Hope you enjoy it. Brennan played with them for about 3 hours and even played with his sister with them!

Dana

The nice thing about the catapult (Falcon 4) is that we made it completely out of scraps and recycled material.  The bad thing is that only fired a gumball about 10-15 feet.  If you decide to build one, please make sure that you don’t leave your kids alone around them as they definitely have some snap-back. That said, we challenged ourselves to something bigger … and Falcon 5 was born.

We spent a few minutes on the Internet and found some substandard free plans for miniature seige weapons and were unsatisfied so we sat down and drew this one out.  Luckily, it worked only after about two or three modifications to the original design.

The first step was to build the frame – a 54″ by 27″ box made out of 2″x4″ lumber. As you can see, it is also the perfect size for Brennan to lay down in.

You can see in the picture that there is a cross lap joint which is about 3.5″ wide to fit and hold the uprights.  This was a pretty cool experience to see Brennan working with tools really for the first time mostly by himself. I was impressed to see him using a hammer that was about as big as he was.  And don’t worry he didn’t operate the chop saw in the photo.

After chiseling the joint and cutting a half lap in the uprights, we attached the 40 in uprights with drywall screws.  For a crossbar, we bought a steel rod from Home Depot and cut it to fit the width.  For the swing arm, we cut a 8 ft 2 by 2 down to 6ft.  The cross bar split the swing arm at about 41 inches.

Instead of creating a trough specific for the projectile to slide down, we just put a piece of plywood to the cover the entire surface of the frame.  For the counterweight, we used a 10lb diving belt weight and the pouch which was cut from a shop towel was attached to the swing arm with twine.  This was definitely a pretty simple trebuchet to build but then again, we did it with no plans and no help.  At the end of the day, we were able to consistently launch a 0.1 lb ball of kidney beans wrapped in aluminum foil about 35-40 ft.

Here it is all finished and being fired for the first time.  If you look to the left of the swing arm in the second picture, you’ll see the first gumball we launched and the first pouch which we made out of duct tape (it didn’t work well at all).

I’ll post a video now that I am back in Charlotte and have my video camera. I have to reassemble the trebuchet when Jill isn’t looking so wish me luck.

Dana