Fun Monday - The Art of Science

This week's Fun Monday is being hosted by WT of A Dingo's Got My Barbie, he wants to see some clothing art. That's tee shirts, baseball caps, hoodies, sports uniforms or any bit of clothing that you or your kids own that has interesting, funny or artistic graphics.

As some of you know, my husband and I are science teachers. Daddy D teaches chemistry and physics to high school students, and I teach science to seventh graders, which are children aged 12 and 13. Many of our t-shirts display something cute or meaningful about science. Sometimes we will wear these fun shirts to emphasize an important idea or concept, or to generate good feelings about science.

This aqua t-shirt is from Beaner's, our favorite coffee shop. C8H10N4O2 is the chemical formula for caffiene.

Daddy D and I both participated in National Science Foundation institutes held at the University of Wisconsin. The badger acting as a chemistry teacher used to be the university mascot, Bucky the Badger.

This Albert Einstein picture glows in the dark. The Einstein quote says, "One feels as if one is dissolved into nature."

The quote next to the big cats says, "In the age before man, the earth lost one species every thousand years. Today we lose one every twenty minutes."

*This shirt may be my favorite.

In education and specifically in science education, educators will speak about hands on learning and authentic assessments. Both of those strategies are crucial in science instruction, but I believe that teacher-directed demonstrations are another important instructional tool. Daddy D and I have a variety of demonstrations about air pressure and other topics that we present to our science students. One of my favorite demonstrations is pushing an egg in a bottle with air pressure. Usually, students assist me with this feat, but these pictures were taken on Saturday.


First a hard-boiled egg is placed in the bottle opening. Students are asked how the hard-boiled egg can be pushed in the bottle using air pressure.

Second, the shell is removed.




Third, a flaming paper towel is placed in the bottle, and the egg is quickly placed back in the bottle opening.




Students might observe the egg bouncing up and down and then dropping in the bottle. Students are asked how the egg went into the bottle. Many will say, "The egg was s*cked into the bottle." Then, we will discuss the air being warmed by the flames and becoming less dense. The warm less dense air rises and causes the egg to be pushed up as the air escapes from the bottle. This in turn reduces air pressure in the bottle causing the greater air pressure to push the egg into the bottle.


Finally, students will ask how the egg is removed from the bottle. The answer is to increase the air pressure inside the bottle. Blowing air into the bottle will increase air in the bottle, and Voila the egg comes out. The students often exclaim, "Eeeww...gross.





*The quote at the bottom of the Science Never Sucks shirt proclaims, "it can push, it can pull, but it will never, ever suck, Nope, Nuh uh! Physically impossble. Ma nature won't let it happen. No sirree , No way. suckus impossibleus."