coconut oil

Project #15: Make Homemade Glue from Milk
With milk, white vinegar and baking soda, you can make your own glue right at home. Make it an investigatory project by changing up the recipe and testing which results in the strongest glue. You could also try varying the ingredients to make it dry faster, or work on different materials (wood vs. plastic vs. paper).

Image via wonderhowto.com

A.) --WATER FLOW IN PLANT: Can water travel through plant stems?
MATERIALS: graduated one liter bottle,1 white carnation with long stem, 2 glasses, red and blue food coloring
PROCEDURE:
1. Pour 500 ml of water into each glass.
2. Add three or four drops of food coloring to each glass. Be sure the color is dark. Add more food coloring if necessary.
3. Very carefully cut the stem in half along the length of the stem from the bottom to about half way up to the flower.
4. Place one half of the flower stem in the blue water and the other half of the stem in the red water.
5. Let the flower stand in the water for 48 hours (2 days).
6. Enrichment: Repeat the experiment with another flower, but cover the flower only with plastic wrap and secure the bottom of the plastic wrap with tape.
POSSIBLE HYPOTHESIS: The water will travel from the glass to the flower making it change color. OR The water will not travel up the flower and nothing will change.
POSSIBLE CONCLUSION: The water traveled up the xylem tubes to the flower petals. The color moves through the xylem allowing the color to be distributed throughout the cells of the petals causing their color to change.

B.) --Putting Toothpaste To The Test
PURPOSE: To find out if different brands of toothpaste remove different liquids stains better or worse. (example: Does Colgate remove PowerAde stains better than Crest?)
STEPS in doing the experiment:
1.) Take your beverages and pour 1 cup of each liquid into a separate cup.
2.) Take 3 white eggs and place 1 separate egg into each of the cups with the beverages inside.
3.) Set your timer for 24 hours and when all the eggs have been placed inside the cups start the timer.
4.) Once the eggs have been soaking for 24 hours remove them with a spoon from the cups and put them in 3 separate bowls.
5.) Take your toothbrush and put 1 of the toothpastes on it. Brush the egg for 1 minute on one side of the egg.
6.) Once you have finished brushing for a minute take paper towel and wipe off the remaining toothpaste.
7.) Take the same egg you had just been brushing and label it with a 1,2, or 3 so you know which toothpaste you used. Keep the same number for each toothpaste when you do the other eggs. (ex. 1 - Colgate, 2- Crest, 3-Oral-B)
8.) Take another brand of toothpaste and the same egg you had previously been working on and repeat instructions 5 and 6.
9.) Repeat instructions 5-8 till you have done all the eggs.
10.) Record your findings as you go along. Take pictures so you can go back and look at before and after.

C.) --What pain medication's capsule has the fastest breakdown after being swallowed? ( breakdown means "dissolve sufficiently to empty contents into digestive tract".)
PROCEDURE: To test which pain medications break the fastest, purchase a few pills of the different pain reliever products (i.e., Tylenol, Advil, Pamphrin, Bayer, etc.) and put them all in different glasses of water at the same time and record the data you collect while observing the experiment. (Hint: To serve as your control, all of the glasses of water should have exactly the same conditions for each pill...the same water temperature, the same volume of water, etc.)

D.) --What popular brand of soda affects our teeth the most?
PROCEDURE: Test four different teeth in four different popular beverages for a month to see the effects each beverage has on the tooth. (If you do not have four teeth to use, you can use egg shells instead...because eggshells are white and porous like the surface of our teeth, they can be used as a substitute.)
Independent Variable: The Four Beverages
Dependent Variable: The Effects each beverage has on the tooth
Control:
-Same size container for each beverage with tooth
-Same type of tooth in each beverage container
-Same amount of beverage in each container
-Same amount of light exposure for each container
-Same temperature for each container

E.) --Investigate the effects of temperature change on ants
MATERIALS & PROCEDURE: You will need an ant observatory and some ants. You will also need a cooler or refrigerator large enough to place the ant observatory into. Notice the activity of the ants as they move around at room temperature. Record the temperature. Now place the observatory in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes are up remove the observatory and notice how slowly the ants move. Ants move slower at colder temperatures. As the temperature goes up the ants will become more active. *Your Hypothesis should answer these questions: What are the effects of temperature change on ants? Why does this happen?

F.) ----What is the most effective mosquito lure? A study of stimuli that attract mosquitoes:
Mosquitoes are nuisance insects that bite and bother people. By learning about a stimuli that attract mosquitoes we may attract mosquitoes into traps or attract them to an environment away from ourselves. Stimuli can be anything that can cause a response or reaction. Possible stimuli for mosquitoes are certain sounds, odors, lights and colors. In this project you will investigate possible mosquito attracting stimuli such as color, heat and more. You will trap mosquitoes attracted by each stimuli and count and record the results.

G.) --Does the color of a Humming Bird feeder affect the frequency in which they use it? Do Humming Birds prefer certain colors over others? What colors are Humming Birds most and least attracted to?(You could test to determine if color was a factor in the Humming Birds' attraction to the feeder by placing several different colored bird feeders in various areas where Humming Birds frequent and measure and record the amount of sugar water that is left in the feeder at the end of each day for a period of time.)

How do I make an electromagnet?
It is fairly easy to build an electromagnet. All you need to do is wrap some insulated copper wire around an iron core. If you attach a battery to the wire, an electric current will begin to flow and the iron core will become magnetized. When the battery is disconnected, the iron core will lose its magnetism. Follow these steps if you would like to build the electromagnet described in our Magnets and Electromagnets experiment:
Step 1 - Gather the Materials
To build the electromagnet described in our Magnets and Electromagnets experiment, you will need:
One iron nail fifteen centimeters (6 in) long
Three meters (10 ft) of 22 gauge insulated, stranded copper wire
One or more D-cell batteries
A pair of wire strippers
Step 2 - Remove some Insulation
Some of the copper wire needs to be exposed so that the battery can make a good electrical connection. Use a pair of wire strippers to remove a few centimeters of insulation from each end of the wire.
Step 3 - Wrap the Wire Around the Nail
Neatly wrap the wire around the nail. The more wire you wrap around the nail, the stronger your electromagnet will be. Make certain that you leave enough of the wire unwound so that you can attach the battery.

When you wrap the wire around the nail, make certain that you wrap the wire all in one direction. You need to do this because the direction of a magnet field depends on the direction of the electric current creating it. The movement of electric charges creates a magnetic field. If you could see the magnetic field around a wire that has electricity flowing through it, it would look like a series of circles around the wire. If an electric current is flowing directly towards you, the magnetic field created by it circles around the wire in a counter-clockwise direction. If the direction of the electric current is reversed, the magnetic field reverses also and circles the wire in a clockwise direction. If you wrap some of the wire around the nail in one direction and some of the wire in the other direction, the magnetic fields from the different sections fight each other and cancel out, reducing the strength of your magnet.

Step 4 - Connect the Battery
Attach one end of the wire to the positive terminal of the battery and the other end of the wire to the negative terminal of the battery. If all has gone well, your electromagnet is now working!
Don't worry about which end of the wire you attach to the positive terminal of the battery and which one you attach to the negative terminal. Your magnet will work just as well either way. What will change is your magnet's polarity. One end of your magnet will be its north pole and the other end will be its south pole. Reversing the way the battery is connected will reverse the poles of your electromagnet.
Hints to Make Your Electromagnet Stronger
The more turns of wire your magnet has, the better. Keep in mind that the further the wire is from the core, the less effective it will be.
The more current that passes through the wire, the better. Caution! Too much current can be dangerous! As electricity passes through a wire, some energy is lost as heat. The more current that flows through a wire, the more heat is generated. If you double the current passing through a wire, the heat generated will increase 4 times! If you triple the current passing through a wire, the heat generated will increase 9 times! Things can quickly become too hot to handle.
Try experimenting with different cores. A thicker core might make a more powerful magnet. Just make certain that the material you choose can be magnetized. You can test your core with a permanent magnet. If a permanent magnet is not attracted to your core, it will not make a good electromagnet. An aluminum bar, for example, is not a good choice for your magnet's core.
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