Sunrise Christmas Morning

Construction

I have been lazy about blogging. Sorry. We've been a little busy and I've been falling asleep as soon as the kids get to bed and I finally sit down for a second. But here's a picture of one of our Christmas traditions: Gingerbread house making. THis year I found pre-cut kits at IKEA for everyone to put together. Erika also tipped me off to the benefits of hot glueing the houses together. (No one ever eats the houses, only the candy. So this was awesome!!) THe kids had a great time. Then Nate and Jake used them for their project later (we believe in recycling:)). Anyway, hopefully I'll get around to blogging the rest of our holiday. Right now I need to go frost some yummy sugar cookies!

Science Projects for Big Kids

So, Jake and I have spent the last few days messing around building air cannons. PVC, automatic sprinkler valves, a handful of parts from Radio Shack, and next thing you know, we are shooting golf balls 250' into the water hazard out back.

Then, we saw this link, and got some even better ideas. A little poking around on Craig's List, and the next thing you know, we have hooked up a vacuum pump, and sealed off the end of the firing tube.

We needed a target to test out our new contraption, so we lined up the gingerbread houses (all the candy had been picked clean). We placed a bag of rocks behind the targets to stop the ball, and then propped up a flat cardboard box with plywood inside, just for good measure--don't want to hit the neighbors' house. Here is the "before" photo.

We put in 4 golf balls, just for fun. Turned on the vacuum pump, charged the pressure tank to 130psi, made sure there are no cars or joggers . . . FIRE!

It fired through all the gingerbread houses, embedded one of the golf balls in the middle of the bag of rocks, and blew the bag of rocks clean off the table.

Maximum theoretical speed = 760mph
Force: F = PA = P(pi)r2 = (634,407 Pa)(3.14)(0.019 m)2 = 719.5 N = 161 lb

Acceleration: a = F/m = (719.5 N)/(0.038 kg) = 18,933 m/s2
Velocity: v2 = 2ax = 2(18,933 m/s2)(3.3 m) or v = 339.7 m/s = 760 mph or 1,115 ft/s

Our estimate, around 450mph.

Seeing Green

I have been looking for a large capiz chandelier for a while. I saw one on ebay a couple years ago and have been kicking myself ever since because I hadn't been able to find that one again. But....I saw this one at a local antique store and snapped it up. Nate hung it for me yesterday. It involved some jerry-rigged homemade scaffolding and some other make do-with-what-we-have situations.

The chandelier is about 5 feet tall and we hung it in our entry way which is two stories. It's made out of thin pieces of shells. And it is like a wind chime, moving with any breeze. But it gives a cool green tinted light. And I love it at night.