Bag 'o Science

I took Charlotte to the Science Center of Iowa two weekends ago, and during the car ride all Char could talk about were the things she had done in the "Small Discoveries" area last June. I don't even know how she could remember all of that from eight months ago, but people say that kids don't miss a thing, and I have discovered that to be true (most of the time). 

As soon as we bought tickets, Char threw off her coat and bolted around the corner to find the "Small Discoveries" room. It was blocked with an "Under Construction" sign, and I could hear Char's outburst, "Ohhhh Noooooo!" before I could catch up to her. She cried for about a minute, but she calmed down, and the Science Center had a lot of other distractions for her to enjoy. We had a blast, and I wrote about most of our day there in an earlier post. 

What I didn't tell you was that one of the distractions was in a large, conference room with a "Girls In Science" sign pointing to it.

Char likes Sid the Science Kid on PBS and They Might Be Giants's Here Comes Science songs, so I thought we'd give it a whirl. We weren't too sure about the "bug lady" and her Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. The insect was endlessly running on her hand-over-hand-over-hand treadmill, but we leaned in for a peek and learned that the cockroaches only hiss when they're scared.

(Char was squeezing my had too tightly for me to take a picture of our own, so I found Ryan Somma's similar picture on flickr.)

There was a display that allowed you to compared ape skulls to human skulls, but I assumed that was about evolution, and so I steered us clear of that. I don't think Char's ready to understand the grey-area-glue that holds science and religion together in my belief system. For instance, I believe in the science that is practiced by doctors, but after watching my daughter being born in a hospital I have no doubt that God exists.

Luckily, Char was too enthralled with the polyacrylamide polymers to notice the old bones. These tiny spheres are hydrophilic, and the water they like to absorb causes them to swell to sizes you wouldn't think possible. A couple of the polymers on the table were the size of tennis balls. Plus, they're "squishy and they bounce"!

Best of all, the fine folks from Flint Hills gave Char some polymers of her own to grow at home.

When compared to the size of the text on the paper, you can see how small the spheres were.

Following the instructions, we used distilled water from the grocery store so the water would have as few impurities as possible. After soaking for a few days, the spheres grew to the size of a quarter. It became a ritual to "check our project" each morning.

Since they're now mostly composed of water, the spheres disappear when you put them back into the bowl.

The idea was to grow them as large as we could, and then let them dry back down to original size so we could try different liquids. Well, that was my idea anyway. Char's idea was to poke the spheres with her finger and laugh when they shattered into wiggly pieces. We did get one sphere to survive a week of poking and bouncing, and he got to be pretty big.

Let's zoom in.

So, after a couple of visits to the Science Center and a successful science experiment at home, does Charlotte want to grow up and have a job a scientist?

"No, I want to do all of the jobs!"

I think exposure activities like "Girls In Science" help make that possible. Thanks, Science Center.