District Science Fair

Today was the District Science Fair. Our school science fair was over two months ago and so I told Jenna to read through her information to refresh her memory! This brought back memories from when Jaiden came to the District Science Fair when she was in the first grade. I brought Jenna in to set up her poster and walked around and looked at some of the other projects. They encouraged parents to stay on campus and so I brought my laptop and went into the lounge area and got caught up on my journal.

After the judging I met up with Jenna. She had made friends with the cute girls at her table. Jenna and I went to Chick-fil-a for lunch and then headed back to look at all of the exhibits and then stayed for the awards ceremony. There were two winners from Arrowhead. One of my former primary kids, Hadley, won first place in the first grade division in Engineering for the draw bridge he made out of legos. It was pretty cool!

First Place Science Fair Winner!!

Jenna won first place in the fourth grade Science Fair!! Way to go, Jenna! It was a simple project, but even simple projects take several hours of work! 

A couple of months ago Jenna said that she was worried that she hadn't yet participated in enough extra curricular events to get the Arrowhead Medallion at the end of the year. I suggested that she do the Geography Challenge and so she did. It involved many many hours of studying -- and she did awesome!! She also wanted to do the Science Fair. To be honest, I wasn't thrilled about helping with another Science Fair project. (Do a search on this blog under "Science Fair" and you will see just how many Science Fair projects I have helped with through the years!)

Jenna suggested doing something with candles and I thought that was a great idea! At first she was going to compare different brands of candles to see which ones would last the longest. But we decided that it would contain too many variables and so we decided to use just one package with different colors to see how the white compared with the colored candles. Jenna thought that the white would burn the fastest, but it actually burned the slowest of the four colors. So that turned out to be an interesting experiment.

We then decided to go a different route and test to see if putting the candles in the freezer would help them burn longer. Jenna guessed that that they would -- and they did!! I told her that she could choose either of those experiments for her board and she wanted to do the one that involved putting the candles in the freezer (I think she just wanted her hypothesis to be correct, ha ha!)

Question:

Will a candle burn longer if it has been put in the freezer?    

Hypothesis:  

I think that birthday candles that have been put in the freezer will burn longer than birthday candles at room temperature.

Procedure:  

I will take 16 candles (4 different colors) and measure each one with a line one inch from the top. I will put 8 in the freezer overnight (2 for each color) and leave 8 out at room temperature (2 for each color). I will then light two of the same color and temperature candles  and time them with a stopwatch to see how fast they burn down to the line. I will take an average of the two times and compare the candles at room temperature with the candles that were put in the freezer to see which burn the longest.   

Data/Observations: 

I noticed that the colored candles burned faster than the white candles. All of the candles from the freezer burned longer than the candles that were at room temperature.

 Results:

These are the times it took for the candles to burn down to the line in minutes and seconds.  

Room Temperature                          Freezer

Blue: 3.80                                           Blue: 4.75

Pink: 3.57                                          Pink:  4.30

Yellow: 3.18                                     Yellow: 4.40

White: 4.30                                     White: 4.50

Conclusion:

My hypothesis was correct. The candles from the freezer took longer to burn down to the line than the candles at room temperature. I think this happens because the freezer makes them cold and stiff and so they melt slower than candles at room temperature.

Summary:

I wanted to see if candles put in the freezer would take longer to burn than candles at room temperature. I marked 16 candles with a line and left half on the counter and put half in the freezer. My hypothesis was correct. The candles in the freezer took longer to burn. This is helpful to know because we can freeze our birthday candles right before using them so that they don’t get wax all over our cake and burn down before getting a chance to blow them out!

 Bibliography:

https://www.thriftyfun.com/Freezing-Candles-Before-Use-4.html

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/how-to-make-a-candle-last-longer/

Science Fair -- Jaiden (age 12 -- 7th Grade)

Jaiden participated in the Regional Science Fair at SUU today!!

 

Science Fair 2017

It was a pain getting the Science Fair projects done this year.  Rick worked all day in Vegas on Saturday and Jaiden and I helped spent half the day helping Josh (age 10 -- 5th Grade) with his project. It was a simple project, but still took several hours from start to finish. We helped Jenna (age 8 -- 2nd Grade) with hers on Monday night and it took several hours too. The kids had fun doing the experiments though. Their big motivation for doing the Science Fair is the Arrowhead Medallion that they earn at the end of the year. There are a list of requirements to choose from and the Science and Literacy Fair are on the list as possible options. Our family has done almost twenty science fair projects through the years. We truly have this down to a "science," pardon the pun. I am ready for a break!

 Love this picture!!

Science Fair

Jaiden and Emily did a fantastic job on their joint Science Fair Project!! They did the entire project at school and put the whole board together without any help!  Great job girls!!

District Science Fair: Jaiden

Jaiden (age 11, 6th grade) competed in the District Science Fair at Tonaquint Intermediate School today.  Then we went out to lunch at Costa Vida!!

Junior Science and Engineering Fair at SUU (Janelle age 13 -- 7th Grade)

Today I went to the Junior Science Fair at SUU! It was so fun! I had to be at my school at 6:00 that morning and I arrived back to the school at 6:00 that night!  We rode the bus an hour to Cedar City.  We set up our boards and everyone made sure there wasn't a violation in their project.  For my project I did an experiment to see if the moon gives off energy.  I went outside on the new moon, full moon, and the days before and after at multiple times and used a multi-meter to measure the voltage.  I was excited when my project was one of the ones chosen for the Science Fair today!  

We had some free time before we were judged! And by free time, I mean we went to get f 'real shakes there! They were so good! I got a lot of brain freezes though...:) it hurt! When we got bored we found the rest of the class in the corner playing a fun game called "Superfrog" where everyone has a special position and animal noise. But when someone gets out, everyone switches positions! Then we got judged, for two full hours! At first it was fine, but then it started getting boring because judges became more scarce.

After that we took down our boards and ran to try to get a good spot in the lunch line! Luckily we did, it was so worth it! There was yummy pizza, salad, cookies and lemonade.  We had a little more free time after that and then went to the afternoon workshops. Chemistry Madness was full, so I went to Exploding Bridges instead. Turns out the bridges don't explode, they just flew everywhere when you pulled one of the popsicle sticks out. Kind of a bummer. After that we went to the Egg Drop. Kind of fun, but my team's egg totally cracked. Whoops. I had another idea to crack the egg ahead of time inside the bag so it couldn't break when we dropped it, but it was after we already made it.

After that, we went to the awards ceremony which was actually pretty boring. All my friends got 3rd place or above in their category though, so that is exciting! After the ceremony, we started heading home. I almost got left! Mr. James handed out the leftover pizza on the bus. It was cold, but still yummy! We also got T-shirts for going. I got two, since they were throwing them out during the awards ceremony. One is white and the other is red. It was so fun and I'm glad I went! This makes me want to visit again soon!

                               -Janelle Jensen

Science Fair

Today was the science fair -- boy, those projects really are a LOT of work!!  I was glad to get it over with!  I had always wanted to try an experiment with growing bacteria and so I had suggested it to the kids and they were excited about it too.  It was cool to watch the bacteria grow but I never want to do that again!  The bacteria really started to stink after a couple of days even with the sealed petri-dishes and I had to cover the incubator with a cookie sheet.  It was gross and made me a little paranoid that we might get sick from it!  So I was relieved to get rid of it! 

But Jaiden still has hers to do (also with Bacteria) and so we aren't finished yet!  Hers will be simple though and she is old enough that she should be able to do it all herself with just a little supervision, unlike Jenna who required LOTS of parental help!

And there probably isn't as much bacteria as the project suggests. Normally we use antibacterial cleaners on the counters, sink, and so forth, but we purposely didn't use them for fear it would skew the results. 

I went to the school to look at all of the projects -- I can't believe the kind of time that obviously went into some of these projects and their boards.  Some of them really went all out in decorating their boards.  Josh (age 9 -- fourth grade) and Jenna (age 7 -- first grade) didn't win anything but they didn't really seem to care.  It is the first Science Fair Project for both of them and so they didn't have any preconceived notions about what to expect.

 

Science Fair Winner

Congratulations to Janelle (age 9) for winning Second Place in the Science Fair for the Third Grade!

Science Fair Winner!!

Jaiden (age 6) got FIRST PLACE in the Science fair in the first grade division!  Surprise, surprise!  She got a trophy, a ribbon, AND a T-shirt!  She was excited!  She also gets to go on to District.  Way to go, Jaiden!  She had a very simple project since we wanted an experiment that she could do on her own.  We  were actually a little surprised it won first place. Of course so much depends on the age group, the number of people participating, the presentation, and so forth.

But Janelle (age 8) was really sad because she didn't win anything with her project.  She won second place last year and so I think she was expecting to come away with something.  But there were TONS of amazing projects.  I would really hate to be the judge choosing between so many great ones.  We had a nice long mother/daughter talk about how the science fair and other competitions are provided so that students can get excited about learning something new.  

I reminded her of all of the fun we had making and flying the paper airplanes to see how far they would fly.  I pointed out that she learned how to apply the scientific method.  We talked about sharing in the joy of others when they win (even if we don't).  It is fun to win, but kids also learn by not winning. And while those disappointments can seem crushing at the time, it is all part of life and growing up. I just hope our children have a sense of worth that is not dependent on external factors but of knowing that they are loved and a child of God.

Elementary School Science Fair Projects

I am embarrassed to admit that with this many kids, none of them have ever participated in the science fair before this year.  Not that I am against it by any means -- I am all for science!  It is just that I am often feeling just a bit overwhelmed by everything I have to do and also somewhat intimidated by the whole science fair project thing.  In past years, the kids would bring home notes from school asking about their interest in the Science Fair.  I would look over the note and nonchalantly ask, "Would you like to be in the Science Fair?"  They would say, "No thanks."  And I would actually feel somewhat relieved and say, "Okay, well maybe next year." 

Well, this year, Jared (age 10) hasn't really taken a lot of initiative to sign up for anything outside of regular school and scouts. He has been going with the flow and doing very well in school, but I was hoping he would show an interest in some extracurricular activities on his own. So when he came home and said, "I want to do the Science Fair AND the Geography Challenge," I was thrilled! He said he wanted to get some plants and water one with water and one with Coke and see how they grow. 

So we bought him some plants and let him go at it! Janelle (age 7) didn't want to miss out on the fun and so she asked if she could do a Science Fair project too.  I think we chose something a little too difficult for her to do completely independently though (like I said, I am new at this) and so next year we will keep it more simple!  But it has been a great experience for my kids.  I have a feeling that there will be a lot more Science Projects coming from the Jensen family in the future!  Their school Science Fair is next week. I am excited to go and see all of the presentations!