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#TheoryFire – fire needs air to burn

Fire image for stem at home blog

This experiment was my idea because we had been roasting marshmellows on an outdoor fire, and Millie wasn’t sure why it took a while to light it. Of course she wouldn’t know that fire needs lots of air to burn, but how do I explain this to her?

Disclaimer: please be safe if you are experimenting with fire and wear the appropriate safety gear. If in doubt, don’t do it, just watch a video about it!

If you do want to run an experiment, this young guy does a good one with two different sized glasses:

It talks a lot about oxygen, but I just wanted to talk to Millie about air since gases in the atmosphere (I believe) is a whole different topic altogether, and would probably go straight over her head.

So our results in this experiment were that fire needs air, and we proved the theory that fire needs air to burn.

Here’s a video from James May that is really interesting for the older kids out there who are interested in learning more:

We’d love to know how you went. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook to keep up with all things Stem At Home.

MOST IMPORTANTLY – don’t forget to join Facebook Group and share with us as we are trying to build a community of people who are experimenting with each other.

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#TheoryNonLiving – living or non living?

This theory was given to me by my sister, who is an awesome mother who happens to be an ex-primary school teacher and she’s always talking to her kids about living and non-living. Super helpful.

Millie’s class had been talking about this and the whole concept was difficult her many to get their heads around, so we decided to look into this at home.

So my hypothesis to prove was – This plant is nonliving:

Non-Living theory

This stumped us a lot to start out with because many of the key indicators (moving around, breathing, growing etc) were not immediately present, so we had to learn a bit about plants.

We also started to talk to her about other non-living items, like rocks and even our house. We decided they were non-living.

The video we watched (below) was key for us. It lists four key characteristics of living things:

1.  The grow

2. The reproduce

3. They adapt to their environment

4. They eat

I’m not saying these are the only characteristics, but they certainly were enough for us.

So our results in this experiment were that plants are living, and we disproved the theory that plants are non-living.

Here’s a video to help explain living vs. non-living

We’d love to know how you went. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook to keep up with all things Stem At Home.

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MOST IMPORTANTLY – don’t forget to join Facebook Group and share with us as we are trying to build a community of people who are experimenting with each other.

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#TheoryCocoon – This is a cocoon, or is it?

Image for Theory Cocoon blog STEM at Home

*Heads up – We’ve changed things a bit. I’m going to be blogging AFTER we’ve completed our experiments in our Facebook Group, so make sure you join if you want to experiment with us at the same time.

So, this one totally got me!

Millie came home one day from school where they had been looking at the life cycle of a butterfly, and she used a word that I hadn’t associated with that topic so I decided to investigate.

The theory was that this is a cocoon

Theory cocoon

So my hypothesis to prove was – This is a cocoon

So I have read The Very Hungry Caterpillar around a million times in my life which said “it makes a cocoon around itself”,  so yeah, that proves my hypothesis right? WRONG. Eric Carle, you are wrong!

Here’s a link explaining that the above picture, IS A CHRYSALIS!

So our findings were that no, it is not a cocoon. That picture is of a chrysalis, and my mind is blown.

We’d love to know how you went. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook to keep up with all things Stem At Home.

MOST IMPORTANTLY – don’t forget to join Facebook Group and share with us as we are trying to build a community of people who are experiementing with each other.

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Theory results – smiling is contagious

Our conclusion from our STEM at Home theory is that smiling is contagious.

Milli ereally enjoyed doing this, and it was a good way to cheer people up when we thought they might need it.

 

A nice and easy experiment to see how our actions can affect those around us 🙂

How did you go? Share with us in our private Facebook Group, or comment on this blog. We’d love to know how you went. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook to keep up with all things Stem At Home

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Theory – Smiling is contagious

Thanks to Anita Stent for the theory idea!

This fortnight at STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) at Home, we are talking about whether smiling is contagious. Can you catch a smile from someone else?

This was pretty cool, Millie and I had to walk around smiling at people to see if they would smile back. I think her teacher thought she was a bit crazy!

When I spoke to Millie, her hypothesis was that yes, people do catch smiles 🙂

So we just had to take a note of how many people we smiled at and whether they “caught” our smile. I thought this was a good way to explain what contagious meant, and how easy it is to catch something.

We have an explanation on how to perform an experiment here if you’re  not sure where to start.

I’m going to use the hashtag #TheorySmile and #STEMatHome for this experiment, so feel free to use it on any related posts in Facebook or Instagram.

Happy experimenting! Remember to like us on Facebook, we’re also on my Instagram page and if you would like to share your findings you can join us at our private Facebook Group STEMatHome

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Theory Results – Wash your hands before you eat

Our conclusion from our STEM at Home theory is that you should wash your hands before you eat.

Our bread was not looking good after a week in a sealed plastic bag!

We found that touching something, washed or unwashed, is much worse than not touching at all, so we should try to keep our hands to ourselves.

I have to admit I thought the unwashed was going to be pretty bad, but for us it wasn’t that much different to the washed. Maybe Millie’s hands were cleaner than I thought? Might be an idea to do this at different times of the day and see if the results vary.

How did you go? Share with us in our private Facebook Group, or comment on this blog. We’d love to know how you went. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook to keep up with all things Stem At Home

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Theory – Wash your hands before you eat

Thanks to Jaime Kirkham for the theory idea!

This fortnight at STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) at Home, we are talking about whether we have to wash our hands before we eat.

Hopefully we can resolve a few pre-dinner arguments by proving this one, and hopefully don’t disprove it…

When I spoke to Millie, her hypothesis was that we should wash our hands before eating, and maybe we will be able to show her why:

Jaime tagged me in a post on Facebook where a teacher did this experiment with her class, so I copied the experiment from her. We used bread to test this out, had a control that was not touched, had one that was touched before washing Millie’s hands, and one after she had washed them.

We kept the bread in plastic bags to stop them from getting contaminated, and we kept them all in the same room for over a week to make sure the environment was that consistent and didn’t skew the results.

We have an explanation on how to perform an experiment here if you’re  not sure where to start.

I’m going to use the hashtag #TheoryWash and #STEMatHome for this experiment, so feel free to use it on any related posts in Facebook or Instagram.

Happy experimenting! Remember to like us on Facebook, we’re also on my Instagram page and if you would like to share your findings you can join us at our private Facebook Group STEMatHome

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Theory Results – The sky is blue

Our conclusion from our STEM at Home theory is that the sky is blue, but only if you are on earth.

This was tough to run as an experiment because it’s not like we could experiment with the sky, so we watched a lot of videos.

We found that the sky appears to be blue because of light waves. We can see the blue light wave when it hits the earth’s atmosphere (which is filled with water). Generally, only the blue light wave can be seen, thus the sky appears blue.

It is the same for the ocean. The ocean’s water is actually transparent. From a distance it appears blue because of how the sun’s light waves are being reflected in by the water.

Here’s more information here is a good video I found and included in last week’s introduction to the sky is blue theory, and there is a cool experiment you can do in here:

BTW – If you are in outer space and looking at the earth there is no sky!

 

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Theory – the sky is blue

Thanks to Mike Coley for the theory idea!

This fortnight on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) at Home the theory we are talking about and wanting to prove/disprove regards the sky being blue. Is the sky actually blue? Maybe it just looks blue…

When I spoke to Millie, her hypothesis was that the yes, the Sky is blue:

This one is pretty hard to test because it’s not like you can take some sky and test it, but we had a look on YouTube for some videos on it. We were able to find a few that explained why the sky appears blue, and that you can use water to test the findings. Here is a video of what I mean, in this one they suggest an experiment at the end that we may try out and post in our findings next week:

We have an explanation on how to perform an experiment here if you’re  not sure where to start.

I’m going to use the hashtag #TheorySky and #STEMatHome for this experiment, so feel free to use it on any related posts in Facebook or Instagram.

Happy experimenting! Remember to like us on Facebook, we’re also on my Instagram page and if you would like to share your findings you can join us at our private Facebook Group STEMatHome

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Theory Results – Eggs float in salt water

Here are our results for the #TheoryEgg experiment.

In our first attempt the egg sunk to the bottom of both the tap water and salt water:

We decided to add some more salt (quite a lot actually) to our salty water and here is what happened:

Here is an explanation about what happens to the water when salt is added, it explains that the water’s density changes when salt is added to it (explaining density to Millie was a bit tricky so this video helped a lot):

How did you go? Share with us in our private Facebook Group, or comment below. We’d love to know how you went. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook to keep up with all things Stem At Home