Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Yesterday I decided to start doing lots of science experiments or demonstrations. It’s just something that we used to do often but during the last couple years just hasn’t been on our hs’ing plate too often. This year this is one thing I am trying to do differently.

In science MK and SK have been studying ‘CELLS’ and osmosis. Our potato experiments were begun yesterday; and MK observed the affects of osmosis. For our one experiment he placed 3 potato halves in a dish of water with a hallow area in each of their centers. One half of a potato was cooked to see if cooking (killing the cells) would have any effect on osmosis. In the hallow of one of the raw and the cooked potato we placed some sugar. Every once in awhile he would look at the potatoes; “Mom, the cooked one looks ugly!”

“Mom, there’s a pool in the middle of the raw potato!”

Sure enough the experiment worked — I love it when that happens.

This morning I continued our first-thing-in-the-morning-set-up-an-experiment routine. Can I call it a routine yet since we’ve only done this two mornings? Yesterday I spotted another cool experiment in the How Nature Works book that I knew we needed to do before the leaves started changing. I went outside and took a few leaves off several different trees. Once inside I borrowed the acetone from DH’s workshop, set up tall glasses on the counter, ground the leaves in my little grinder — MK didn’t care for the noise so he hid behind the counter–, placed one leaf set into each glass, added a little acetone, and then stuck a long piece of coffee filter into the mixture. Very soon the pigment was wicked up the coffee filter leaving tell-tale signs of the various colors contained in the green leaves.
This little experiment reminded SK and MK about an experiment from a few years back. They took ink pens, blotted coffee filters with the pen, stuck the paper end in water and watched the pigment colors separate. Of course they needed to repeat this experiment and they surely have the freedom to explore the topic.
Ahh, experiments. Makes the day fun.