Gosh I miss extra credit, don't you? Wouldn't it be great if you magically got some kind of extra credit in adult life?
Like maybe socks and underwear would magically never touch the floor again if you washed AND folded all the laundry in one day.
Or maybe your partner agree to give you a backrub because you cleaned the toilet in his and your son's bathroom, instead of just your own. Because some days that seriously deserves extra credit.
But alas, surplus points are reserved for the academic world. And this weekend, the 11-year old earned his in Science.
Today's extra credit project was on viscosity. The first trick for the poor kid was figuring how to actually say "viscosity"- he tripped up on the word almost every time. Eventually, we got through reading all of the directions, and set about the task to discover how fast a penny sinks in a glass of water, oil, and corn syrup.
We dropped three pennies into each liquid, timing the descent with my stop watch each time. The results were then transferred to a spreadsheet (oh goodie a spreadsheet!) provided by their teacher. And although we discovered that the penny traveled through water the fastest, the true extra credit was actually about volcano lava. They had been studying volcanoes at school and particularly about one city that was dangerously close to lava flow.
"Now that you have completed the experiment, how could this knowledge and technique be used to help towns that live near a volcano?"
Well crap. I had no clue. I just knew which cup the penny dropped the quickest in.
Luckily the 11-year old had his thinking cap on. He announced that scientists could use similar methods to gauge how viscous the lava is, and therefore how fast it will travel. That would allow the city to know how much time they had before needing to evacuate.
Huh. Good thinking kid. I guess I better just go back to my laundry and toilet cleaning.
Today's picture represents extra credit and science projects, as well as the human mind's amazing ability to come up with solutions to problems. And I'm still gonna ask for that back rub tonight...
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