COLORING PAGE!!!
Did You Know?
Did you know, the objects around us don't actually have any colors! That's right little one, oranges aren't actually orange! Our brain and our eyes work together to figure out what color something is. Every surface reflects light. Our brain balls work with our eyes to figure out what 'colors' (spectrum of light) are being reflected and which are being absorbed by the surface. Let's take a banana as an example, the reason we see the banana as yellow is that the surface of the banana is actually absorbing every color except for yellow! Isn't that cool!?
Warning: This next part gets a lil' advanced: Our eyes have about a bazillion (it's actually more like millions but that doesn't sound as cool) different receptor cells called cones and rods. When your eyes see a color it sets off a different amount of color in each one of your cones (you have 3, one for red, one for green, and one for blue - that's where the term RGB comes from) and your brain then processes the various cone values and interprets the color!!
Materials:
Paper towels
Water
Food coloring
Cups (shot glasses are ideal)
Whatever you want to make your underwater scene (LEGO, cardboard, pom poms, pipe cleaners, glue, etc.)
Instructions:
Step one - take your glasses and fill them with water
Step two - add 1-3 drops of food coloring to each glass (make sure to try mixing different colors to see what will happen!)
Step three - fold your paper towel in half (lengthwise), twice
Step four - fold your paper towel into a snake shape and place each bump in a different glass and watch it absorb all of the colors!
Step five - wait a couple of minutes then take your sea monster out of the glasses
Step six - empty your glasses then put the sea monster back in so it keeps it shape while it dries
Step seven - while you wait for your sea monster to dry, make it a house/sea monster exhibit! Maybe your sea monster wants some friends, a nice table to eat at, or some coral! Your imagination is the limit here, babies!
Big Boon Brain Explanation:
Little ones, I have some bad news, there isn't much to explain for this experiment but I do have a cool physics fact! Have you ever heard of a 'chain fountain'? If you haven't, here's one in action (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dQJBBklpQQ). There is some pretty cool physics happening here and although we aren't making one of these today, it reminded me of our experiment since (if you squint and try and try really hard to imagine it) the chain kinda looks like a sea monster diving into the water!
So you may be wondering 'what in the heck is happening here?' and I hear ya, it's confusing. Scientists are actually still debating on what causes the chain fountain! Originally, it was thought that chains' behavior was due to 'interia'. Interia is a fancy word for an object's tendency to continue to do the same thing unless an external force acts on it. If you read the Big Boon Brain section from last week, you'll know about Newton's famous quote. This is actually another one of Newton's famous quotes (also known as Newton's Laws). He said, "An object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force".
I won't go into the proof of why this phenomenon is not caused by interia since this isn't nap-time :P. Right now, all we know is that the height the chain climbs to is proportional to the distance it falls and that the upwards climbing is due to some reaction force on the chain itself. We don't know exactly how the reaction force works but that's fine because now you're one fact smarter, babies!
Have fun, fishes!
Check out the rest of Summer Camp 2022!
