E is for Explore!: Red Bull and Milk Reaction.
What happens when you add Red Bull to milk in a 1:1 ratio?
What about vinegar and milk in the same ratio?
Change the type of milk from whole, to semi, to skimmed!
Why does any of this happen?
This simple, quick and clean demonstration is perfect for an introduction to States of Matter, to get brains thinking on an Open Evening or as a mini experiment for a STEM session.
Definitely one to try out! And easily performed and explained at home.
13 Vegetables That Magically Regrow Themselves.
I found this link on pinterest so long ago and I have been desperate to bring it to light and actually test each one! The 13 vegetables are divided into easily do-able (spring onions, garlic, romaine lettuce, carrots, basil), feasible (lemongrass, celery, onion and bok choy), feasible if you’re a plant magician (avocado, sweet potato, ginger roots and pineapple) – I think it’s these that I really want to try, including the 3 years for pineapple!
It’s Buzzfeed so each vegetable has it’s own link. The first two levels could be really good fun to do at home or with a STEM group, or a standard lesson, too. Perhaps the top level are only really for at home! Or school technicians over a summer holiday!
Learning Activity: Bulb Growth Chart.
This sounds like an amazing fun little “at home” activity – measuring the growth of a plant. I wonder if you could also measure the root growth? I know that they tend to be windier and far more tangled, but maybe an approximate growth?
I also love the idea given in the post about looking for patterns of growth and comparing different plants. We have windows facing east and west, would that create a difference in growth rates? It would be good for a Biology Plants unit and for STEM.
It should even work for cress in a test tube (that way you don’t have to worry quite so much about remembering to water them!) over a few weeks perhaps.
Plant an Odds-and-Ends Garden.
Some “at home” ways to grow new vegetables. With beetroot, slice the top off and keep the green shoots attached, rinse it and place it in a shallow dish of water.
With celery, cut a bunch of celery down until you have only 3 inches of the base and put it in a shallow dish of water. Within a week, leaves should be growing out of the center. The advise is to peel away rotting stalks as it grows.
Basil stalks can be put into tall glasses of water (small leaves not submerged) and after a few weeks roots should emerge – this should be good to study and visibly see root growth.
Apparently garlic cloves can be fully emerged in water and roots will appear in a few days, sprouts may take a little bit longer, but still in a clear container this would be perfect and perhaps easier to study root growth.
Cut a washed sweet potato in half and put it in another shallow dish of water. Leaves appear in 2 weeks.
Some of these would be perfect for a STEM session – celery, beetroot and garlic for definite, with the others perhaps taking a bit too long. And of course they’re all amazing ideas for Plant Biology and for doing at home. I have a pin somewhere about other fruits/vegetables that you can re-grow at home so I will try and find that to add to this topic.
Until then, I can try out this one!
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