Category: Fun Science Activity (Page 86 of 112)

Take Time to Hear the Insects Sing

September 7, 2009 / Roberta / 0 Comments

This weekend is a fine time to lay back in a lawn chair, close your eyes and listen to nature. What do you hear? If you are lucky, perhaps you will hear some birds and a few insects. The dull hum of the honey bees flying from flower to flower, flies buzzing or perhaps in the evening, you may hear a cricket or katydid.

Here’s a video of a field cricket singing to get you in the mood (you may or may not want to listen for the entire 2 minutes 🙂 ). Notice the wings moving. The scrapers on the wings produce the chirping sounds in crickets.

Activity 1.

Children love to make homemade musical instruments. To imitate a cricket, find a small comb and a wooden craft stick to represent the file and scraper on the cricket’s wings. Rub the craft stick along the comb. Try fast and slow.

Listen to some of the insect sounds from the links in the next activity. Design musical instruments to replicate them. Have fun!

Activity 2.

If you live in New York City and are looking for something to do on September 11 or if you are simply interested in crickets and katydids, take a look at the event known as Cricket Crawl.

Although the title is cricket crawl, the scientists are interested in 7 insects, including a variety of katydids. The survey itself takes on a modern twist, because the researchers want citizen scientists to actually record the insects with their cellphones and then submit their recordings. The results will be posted real-time on a blog.

The website has a lot of information about singing insects, such how to identify them and links to recordings of their songs. For example, you can find out what the Indian house cricket from last week’s post sounds like at Singing Insects of North America or take a look at (and a listen to) Songs of Insects, for crickets, katydids and cicadas

Here’s a list of Insect Sounds (from Arizona) that include a wider variety of insects, including a cloud of midges and honey bees.

Hope you have a wonderful Labor Day and listen to some peaceful insect music!

tree cricket

Weekend Science Fun: Wind Power

August 22, 2009 / Roberta / 0 Comments

Wind, or the movement of air, can be a powerful thing. People have used the wind to do work for hundreds of years. From sailing ships to modern wind turbines, the wind has been harnessed for many useful purposes.

This week we have been investigating how air movement works with various pinwheels, windmills and propellers.

Activities:

Blowing Feathers/Streamers

You can learn about wind using a household electric fan. Be sure to remind your children about safety around fans, such as never sticking anything into the moving blades.

Gather:

Feathers or other lights objects, such as bits of tissue (available in craft stores)
Electric household Fan

Give each child a feather or piece of tissue and allow them to blow on it. Let them free explore, seeing how the feathers lift and fly as the air moves. When they are finished, turn on a fan. Allow them to drop their feather in front of the fan. Does the feather move differently? An actively working air return vent can also work if you don’t have a fan. Repeat using tissue streamers, if available.

If possible, let the children try this outside when there is a breeze.

Windsocks/Streamers/Wind Chimes

Make or obtain a windsock (see windpower.org, for example)

How to make a weatherproof windsock video

and/or tie a few long streamers of cloth or ribbons to a wooden dowel
and/or make or obtain some wind chimes.

Hang the windsock, streamers or wind chimes outside. Watch them often. Discuss whether the day is windy or calm. Explain that windsocks are found at airports, The pilots need to determine the direction and strength of the wind when they take off and land the planes.

Pinwheels

There are hundreds of ways to make pinwheels on the Internet. Here is one way to make a simple pinwheel.

Gather:

Heavy paper, card stock or file folder
Pencil with eraser
Dressmaker’s Pin
Drawing compass or circular pattern
Ruler
Scissors
Modeling clay

Draw a circle about three inches in diameter and cut it out of the paper. Find the center of the circle. Draw a line through the center across the circle. The draw another line perpendicular through the center, creating four equal wedge or pie shapes. Now draw two more lines across the center dividing the fourths in half. You will have eight wedge shapes. Cut along each of these lines to about 1/4 inch from the center.

Have and adult place the pin through the center of the pinwheel and push into the side of the pencil eraser. The pencil will be the handle. Be careful with the pin around small children. Place the modeling clay over the sharp end of the pin to hold it in place. Now gently bend one corner down on each wedge, making sure to create the same angle with each.

pinwheel

Blow on your pinwheel or push it through the air holding the pencil. It should spin as the air hits it. Putting it in from of a fan is fun too.

Windmills

Windmills are basically pinwheels that do work of some kind. In the past windmills were used to grind grains, make paper, extract oils from seeds, and pump water, among other things. These days people are investigating many ways to generate electricity using wind.

This is a video of three example windmills. Note: the quality of the video is slightly better at the original website.

Kids can learn a great deal more about using windmills to generate electricity at Wind with Miller

If your children are interested in making a model of a windmill, Tinker Toys have some useful parts, such as hub wheels.

Helpful Resources:

Feel the Wind (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2) by Arthur Dorros

The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills by Gretchen Woelfle

Cool book about the history of windmills.

Tinker Toys

Twirly Pinwheels

Can you believe it? You can get a windmill at Amazon!

Sea Horses and Other Fish

August 16, 2009 / Roberta / 1 Comment

Our family finally made it to the beach and had a lot of fun. We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium and saw the “Secret Life of Sea Horses” exhibit. It was awesome, take a peek (the aquarium was packed, so excuse the noise):

What kind of creatures are sea horses? Are they fish? They have an exterior that looks rather hard, so some people might wonder if they are crustaceans. The tiny fins and gills give it away though, sea horses are fish! If you replay the video, look for the tiny gills and fins moving.

Sea horses and their relatives, the pipefish and seadragons, are called gasterosteiform fish because they lack scales and have bony plates instead. They are poor swimmers and often rely on camouflage to hide from predators. The seadragons in particular have so many leafy flaps on their bodies they look like floating seaweed instead of animals.

Sea horses are carnivores and eat small crustaceans, such as tiny shrimp and planktonic invertebrates.

This pretty silly video from National geographic gives more fun facts.

Activities:

1. Gyotaku and fish anatomy

Are you familiar with the Japanese art of gyotaku, making prints or rubbings from fish?

gyotaku

Traditionally, prints were made by applying paint to actual fish. Today you can buy rubber or plastic replicas, including those for sea horses. You can print on paper or cloth as you choose. This particular fish is printed on cloth.

Our instructions for making gyotaku (previous post).

2. Moving Through the Water.

Different fish have different shaped bodies. Do some move through the water more easily than others?

Check the CDAS website or the Catalina Island Marine institute for an introduction to fish body types.

Gather:

modeling clay
string or yarn
scissors
sink with water

Cut a few pieces of string about 18 inches long (at least two). Form a few golf ball-sized lumps, the same number as pieces of string. Take a small lump of clay and wrap around one end of the string, so the string is embedded. Form the lump into a rough sea horse shape (perpendicular to string).

Now take another ball of clay and wrap around another piece of string. Form this into a typical fish “tube” shape wrapping around the string.

This shape is called fusiform.

Put each shape into the sink and drag across the water. Does one shape move more easily than others?

Try some other fish shapes as well. Which shape moves through the water most easily?

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Now it is time to finish our summer beach science series and get ready for fall. We’ll miss the sand between our toes (although I think I still have some in my hair), but look forward to a brisk change of pace and some autumn foliage.

ocean