Science Fair

Last week was the much dreaded (by mom) science fair. It is always a lot of work and seems to sneak up on you unexpectedly (is there any other kind of sneaking?!) even though you've known about it for months! It's not that I don't think science is important. I do...after all Tyson is a scientist and he's pretty great! It's just that we tend to put it off too long and then are scrambling to think of ideas, complete projects and glue everything aesthetically onto a giant board. This year was much better though. We got started earlier than usual and it didn't feel so rushed. It also helped that we had the Monday right before the fair off of school for Martin Luther King day. We did run into a few problems, mainly not being able to find big enough demonstration boards here in town so we had to re-purpose ones from prior years. This led to some increased creative placement of information so we could cover up the rips, tears, and left over neon paper on the boards. But I think they turned out very nicely and the kids learned quite a bit during the process. Lexi did hers on Osmosis and proved the process worked by using molasses, dialysis tubing, warm water, a scale, and a timer. Tyson helped her out with this one and we even went to his lab at the college to use his equipment. We were there for a few hours and the boys were starting to get a little crazy as you can tell from Garrett's face in one of these pictures!

Zac did his project on Hydrophobic Sand. He used a lipid (Scotchguard) to coat the sand and when it's placed in water it repels the water and will come out dry when you spoon it out. He learned about the hydrophobic effect and why it is important (our cells have a bi-layer of lipids around them that keeps bad things out of the cell and good things in there where they belong.) He won 2nd place and gets to go to Regional competition in March. He is somewhat nervous about it, but I think he is going to have a great time! Three of his good buddies also won so they are going with him (Jackson Smith, Pierce and Garrett Bryner.) So now we get to spend more time perfecting his board, writing an abstract and a paper and making sure he's ready for region. It will be worth it though!