Van makes science

Van asked me a couple times while we were driving the other day, "tell me something I don't know"

Well there are so many things he doesn't know, I could tell him anything. It was a very exciting question, but it is hard to jump into the really interesting stuff without having a base.

So I decided to start infiltrating his day with chemistry facts so that he would understand the basics and then we could talk about the really fun and interesting parts of it.

So today Van said, "Mom can you tell me a story?"
And this is what I said,

"Once upon a time, there was a hydrogen atom. And he had one electron. Now an electron has a negative charge. But to be truly happy, every hydrogen atom needs two electrons in his valence shell and like I said, he only had one.

So he made friends with another hydrogen atom (who also had one electron) and they shared. So each hydrogen atom was happy because they each had 2 electrons. They went everywhere together. All hydrogen atoms do that. they travel in pairs.

Now, one day, the hydrogen atoms met an oxygen atom. The oxygen atom had two electrons in his first layer-- atoms have layers-- but it only had 6 electrons in its outer valence layer. And to be happy, oxygen atoms need 8 electrons in their outer layer.

So when the hydrogen atom with it's 6 outer electrons met the 2 hydrogen atoms sharing their 2 electrons they all got together to share, and do you know what they made?

A WATER molecule!!!

It was  the coolest water molecule around! But it was lonely. So it went off to find other water molecules."

Van: "then what did they make?"

"Well that depended on the temperature. if it was cold, they made ice and if it was normal temperatures, they made water and if it was hot, they made a gas, like steam."

Van: "And they could even make us?"

"Yes, we have a lot of water in us."

... so the story continued and I tried to talk about the polarity of water. How water molecules are positive on one side and negative on the other side and therefore the molecules attract each other. But I think I was getting a little too science without enough story.

Then on the drive home,
"Mom, will you tell me a story? about a puppy."

"Well once upon there was a puppy. And he had a glass of water. and he decided to mix it with cooking oil from the kitchen. Now oil and water don't mix so you could see separate layers in the glass. The puppy colored the water one color with food coloring and he colored the oil another color
and it was cool."

I went on about the shapes of the oil and water molecules and why they didn't mix. Luckily the first part did the trick.

When we got home Van said, "Zamzam, can we mix water and cooking oil?"
But I was already in the kitchen grabbing the oil before I had to get back to work. We took a glass and Van poured in the water and I poured in the oil and Lance (who had just arrived) and Van watched it. And then they mixed it. and watched it again.

Then we took Esther's bottle and dropped water onto a styrofoam plate.
"see how round those beads of water are? they really don't like to interact with the material of the plate. They pull to themselves instead."
I dropped another water droplet onto the counter.
"See how flat that droplet is? the water likes the surface of the counter better than it likes to attach to itself, so the shape of this water droplet is flat."

The boys played with with the bottle adding more and more droplets. Then they added the water from the plate into the cup with the oil and water which was cool because you could see the water droplets fall through the oil.

"WE MADE SCIENCE!" Van yelled running around the kitchen. He says everything in a yell when he is excited.

I was excited too.

Unfortunately I had to leave for work. I went upstairs to give Esther to Zamzam and Lance and Van added spray wax (for Van's Mohawk) to the cup along with some dried dill and sweet potato crumbs and were mixing it ferociously. I told them to let it settle and see where each thing they had added would end up, in the oil or water layer. We'll see what those little scientists are up to by the end of the day.