Science Fair

It was the kids' Science Fair at their school yesterday.

Here is Lily with half of the liquids for her project of seeing which liquid evaporates the quickest.


Lily pouring stuff into kitchen shot glasses to make it easier to pour out exactly 6 teaspoons of each liquid.


Here are all the liquids on day 9.


Lily at the school next to her science fair board.
Her hypothesis was that the cooking oil would evaporate the fastest because, "It gets all bubbly when you cook it." :-) And as it turned out, the oil didn't evaporate at any recognizable levels. And it was cute how excited she got each day when she checked them each day. She thought it was amazing that the rubbing alcohol was evaporating so quickly. By day 9 of the 10 day experiment, the alcohol was all gone.


Here is Justin putting some apple chunks into container number 1. His project was to see what things are biodegradable.

Justin adding more dirt on top of an item.


To simulate a landfill type of environment, Justin added one cup of water to each container.


Here is Justin on day 10 after opening each container and seeing what



Here is Justin and his science board at the science fair. The 6 different items were: apple chunks, Styrofoam, piece of bread, plastic bag, paper, dryer sheet. His hypothesis was that the apple would biodegrade quicker than the others because, "Apples are juicy, then after a while, it isn't juicy anymore." LOL I love his reasoning.... Anyhow, when he opened the containers on day 10, the apple chunks smelled gross and fermented, but weren't broken down much. However it had brown stuff on the flesh of the apple. The bread smelled gross and was only slightly moldy. The paper was yellow and was breaking down rather quickly. Everything else was the same.

Here is Rebekah doing her last minute science fair project.


Rebekah rolling dice.

Rebekah at the science fair with her board. Originally, she had a longer project in process, but she still needed more time for the results to take place, so she did one on mathematical statistics. So she rolled one die at a time and recorded what she rolled to see if it was actually going to be random or if there were any patterns when rolling a single die. Her hypothesis was that the 4 would be rolled the most and the 6 the least. Shockingly enough, she guess right! Who would have thought that random wasn't so random? :-)

Green and It's Clean, by Quickie

Whilst shopping at Wal-Mart today, I was perusing the cleaning aisle for more scrubby brushes. I used my kitchen one to scrub the grout on my bathroom floor tile. I tell you, grout is a pain in the rear to clean and I was desperate so I used whatever would work. I was not about to put the scrubby back into the kitchen, so I needed a new one. I grabbed one I thought would work and as I did so, I saw there was a cheaper one a couple racks over. Hmmm, cheaper by a few pennies doesn't always mean better but when I saw it was a GREEN product by a company called Quickie, I thought I would give it a try. After all, saving me a few pennies to help the environment doesn't sound too bad. I can look past the fact that it looks brown, I don't care as long as it gets the job done. I saw there was a pot scrubby too so I snatched that and felt really good about doing my part.

I got home, unload the groceries, and tossed the Wal-Mart bags into the trash - yes, I know, I can recycle those, but it is just too much effort to store the bags until my next trip to place into the recycle boxes in the entrances. Besides that, I did my part by purchasing two GREEN products, so it all evens out. Right? Some might argue that I can save the bags and reuse them for things around the house such as: packing material for when I mail packages, padding for storing Christmas decorations, taking up knitting and make a wedding dress out of them for when my girls get older, carrying wet clothes home from the pool, crochet some sandals, liners for bathroom trash cans, or even knitting purses with the many, many bags I go through. And while I am all for being more environmentally conscience, some of them just aren't feasible for me or are just too close to flashbacks of the macrame projects of the past. While macrame has its place in the plant holder arena, I don't feel the look of crocheted clothing from plastic bags - too close to macrame.

"Am I just being too pessimistic or just not ready to go GREEN?" I wondered to myself as I snipped off the hemp twine to release the tags from the scrubbies. Before chucking those into the trash too, I took a closer look at the tag. The tag boasted of "working together to save the earth(tm)" but my keen eye picked out something that just tossed all this "Earth Friendly" GREEN attitude into the garbage with my other never-going-to-be-recycled-and-sent-to-a-landfill-to-rot items.

Three simple words: Made in China.