School is Officially Over

Today was the last day of school for our little academy (enrollment: 2).  The teacher read the last pages and the students finished the last assignments, and so the summer vacation begins.
(For the record, however, the science teacher didn’t get all of the experiments done, so there is still the slight possibility that we may [...]

Science Experiments – On/Off Motor

We did this one tonight and to be honest, I didn’t think it would work. But it did, and rather than explaining it, I took a video of it instead:

Science Experiments – Jello Lenses

I know I haven’t mentioned science experiments in a while. We’ve been doing them, but some of them just aren’t very exciting and so aren’t worth the mention.
And lately there have been more of them. Our curriculum has been doubling up on subjects: We’re still doing magnitism experiments, but also experiments on light.
One [...]

Science Experiments – Mapping a Magnetic Field

Last week we did a science experiment where we mapped a magnetic field. The thing about magnets is that you can feel or see the effects of the magnetic field, but you can’t see the field itself. So to map the field, we took our magnetometer (a magnetized pin on a string) and [...]

Science Experiments – Up in the Air / Strength of a Magnet

We had 2 science experiments this week. The first one had the purpose of detecting and influencing a magnetic field.
We first started by attaching a magnet to the bottom of a pink cup. This cup is not normally used in our house because our 2 boys prefer to drink out of cups of [...]

Science Experiments – Invisible Gears

This week we observed the interaction between two rotating magnetic fields.
We did this by hanging two magnets from the edge of the table in a loop of thread, just far apart enough so that they wouldn’t grab each other and stick together.
The first magnet we spun the string so that it was wound up fairly [...]

Science Experiments – Pin Magnets

This week we discovered that steel straight pins:

Have a natural magnetic poles
Can have their poles changed easily by touching them to a permanent magnet.

We first created a “known” pin magnet by touching the South pole of a permanent magnet to the head of the pin. (Sorry, no dancing angels.)
We then verified that the pin [...]

Science Experiments – Which Pole Is It?

Although I was (mostly) off from work today, my wife didn’t want to get behind in home school, so while other kids were enjoying one last day of summer vacations, ours were “hard” at work with school.
I got to read some to them, and then we also did our weekly science experiments a little early [...]