Starr Weems de Graffenried has a series entitled “Where to Find Inspiration” for “educators, parents and homeschoolers” at the Huntsville Education Activities Examiner. Just FYI, Growing with Science was showcased this week.
Thanks Starr!
Did you know that honey bees aren’t native to the Americas? The honey bee came to North America with the Europeans. The continent wasn’t lacking in bees before honey bees came, however, because a vast assortment of native bees were already happily pollinating flowers.
Like these busy native bees working our sunflowers.
The pint-sized pollinators have been coming in a constant stream since the sunflowers opened.
They leave each flower with yellow pollen-laden legs loaded to overcapacity . How do they even fly?
Thanks to these bees we have a heavy crop of sunflower seeds. Go, bees, go!
To continue the theme of beach science from the last few weeks, today let’s investigate something else found at the beach.
Boats!
Children are fascinated by boats and floating. You can do a lot of interesting science projects with boats, starting with some basic questions: How can huge pieces of heavy metal float? How are boats propelled? Can you really make a boat out of paper?
We already have covered some floating and boat topics in previous posts.
Why Things Float contains some experiments on floating and sinking.
The How long can a paper boat float? challenge, with the early results for paper boats challenge.
The yellow legal pad boats lasted five days.
The Bathtub Buoyancy Challenge asked kids to find ways to propel boats across a bathtub without using their hands or electrical motors. The Bathtub Buoyancy results show several ways to propel toy boats.
It is always fun to build bathtub-sized boats. This video shows two handmade boats powered by battery packs and small electric motors that my son invented recently. A modified toy car powers the paddle boat; the air boat fan is a modified toy airplane propeller.
Why don’t you try inventing a boat?
For more ideas, try
A Simple Steam Boat at Curious Cat
Miniature Boats at HowStuffWorks
Hope you have fun and let us know what kind of boat you invent!
Edit: To check the rest of the posts on beach science, follow these links: