Science Experiments!

I often review books for Luxury Reading. Recently, I reviewed Time for Kids Big Book of Science Experiments ...a book all about science experiments for kids of many different ages. The book was surprisingly good! Most times when I see books like that, the items needed for the experiments will cost me more than the book itself. This book, however, was full of several experiments that I could do with just the items we had on hand. I think this one below was our favorite!

We got to microwave bars of soap! Strange, yes, but quite surprising what the results were. We predicted at first that the soap would melt and get all over the microwave. Since this is a relatively new microwave (after something else got melted in it a few months back!) I was a bit leery...but the other experiments in the book that we had done thus far worked just the way the book said they would, so I tried not be nervous on this one. HA!

Each bar took less than a minute to transform into what you see below. The white one is Ivory...what is called for in the experiment. We decided to try out another brand to see if they both did the same thing...our standard brand is Irish Spring.

(Please don't fill my comments with how they shouldn't be standing that close to the microwave!)

This one decided to sprout legs...and arms.

...and growing some more...

We call the Irish Spring one our "frog" because of the legs it sprouted. Crazy!

I have to be honest...I don't remember completely (at all) what the reasoning is for why the soap does what it does...or why one brand resulted in such a different "blob." Our favorite, though, was the Irish Spring...simply because it made a shape we could identify. :-D The really cool part of it all was that the soap bars held the shape that they formed in the microwave. AND, after they cooled a bit (they were quite hot when we pulled them out!), we could take a piece of the soap and still *use* it as soap! The microwaves didn't change its usefulness at all. Pretty nifty!

There were other experiments...cleaning pennies with vinegar, making boats of aluminum foil (different shapes) and seeing how many pennies it took to sink the different shaped boats, staining a cloth to test out which items in the house are the best stain removers, etc. Really fun stuff...and again, VERY easy! And how great for me that I got to count 6 or 7 credits of science that day!!!