Science Fair

Ron's Science Fair was today. Very exciting when you are a mother of a science wiz. He won 3rd place. It was hard taking all four children there, though, because all seemed tired and anxious most of the time. I tried to get them excited about all the different experiments the children had done. I was interested in knowing that microwaved water didn't hurt plants more than stove heated water and that neither way had killed the plants. I also gained some great insight into what laundry detergents cleaned best. It turns out that the cheapest ones do just as good of a job at getting out stains.

Ron loves chemical reactions and explosions so he had picked an experiment that went along those lines. He wanted to figure out how to increase the explosive reaction of adding Mentos to Diet Coke. He asked, “Does adding more Mentos make Diet Coke spray higher?” Turns out, one Mentos sprayed 4.5 feet whereas 3 Mentos added to a bottle of Diet Coke made an 11 ft explosion! Way cool.

When we got to the fair I found out that Ron had hid his "Lab Notebook" behind his display. I felt like this was the strongest part of his presentation since it was what he had poured his time and heart into so I was sad the judges hadn't seen it. It had cool drawings and showed his cute handwriting. He had even drawn out the chemical diagram of the carbon dioxide since it's found in Diet Coke. I imagined it was similar to any great scientist's notes. :) Nor did he display is "abstract." It's not that I wanted him to be competitive and just have to win, I just wanted him to display all his hard work.

He actually wasn't very into this project. It's almost as if since it was assigned, he didn't want to do it. Otherwise, he is continually asking scientific questions and trying to find results. It’s interesting that he is good at both science and art.