“Storm the Castle” is an exercise in engineering problem solving that’s loads of fun for children of all ages. Students take on the role of “besieging armies”, designing siege engines capable of launching “boulders” (ping pong balls) into the defending castle, earning points depending on where the balls land. They also design a device to retrieve containers of boulders from the “quarry”.
Paper chromatography is a technique for separating out components in a mixture, such as for testing the purity of compounds. In this module, Kidizen scientists will study the composition and separation behaviors of a variety marker types and colors. They will then employ this knowledge and their chromatography skills to identify the various mystery markers from their inks alone!
On the first day of this two-part module, students will determine the physical properties of assorted building materials using a range of hands-on tests. The following day, they will use that information to decide the best materials for constructing a given item or structure, pitching their designs to prospective “customers”.
This activity introduces the concept of displacement and buoyancy as it relates to boats and ships, and then lets students put this knowledge into practice by designing and building model boats to hold as much weight as possible without sinking or capsizing.
How can you tell how acidic or basic something is? Touching or tasting it could be dangerous or unpleasant. In this activity, students use indicator papers made from familiar fruits & vegetables to see which are the best at measuring pH.
A mysterious white powder! What could it be? Our young investigators will sleuth out the identities of the mystery mixtures by first building an “answer key” for how the individual “known” powders react to a variety of tests. Then they’ll use this key to figure out what pair of powders are in each unknown mixture by subjecting them to these same tests.