Science Fair

The boys participated in the school science fair this week. They both worked really hard on their projects and learned so much. When we asked them what they wanted to do their projects on, Colby immediately said fingerprinting.

Learning about finger prints was actually pretty cool. We learned about the different types of fingerprint patterns, and how no body in the world has the same fingerprint pattern as someone else. For his project he took each of our fingerprints and compared them. We have more whorls and loops than arches in our family. Another thing he did was put a fingerprint on a balloon and then blew it up so the kids could see the lines and ridges in more detail.

Logan wasn't sure what to do his project on. At first he wanted to do something about dragons but I said he had to do some thing that was real not mythical. Then he came home and said he wanted to figure out how tornadoes formed. So that's what he did.

He learned all he could about tornadoes. He read a few books and looked up pictures of the internet. He learned that tornadoes form from a large thunderstorm. Inside thunderclouds, warm, humid air collides with cool dry air. The warm air rises, while cool air falls causing an updraft the rotates at high speeds. For his experiment we tried to make a tornado in a bottle. This was more difficult than we thought because we could not get the two bottles to seal without leaking. We tried duct tape, caulk, and hot glue but nothing worked. Finally we just made one that worked long enough for the science fair and only leaked a little. How it worked was you fill one bottle up with water, then fasten it to another empty bottle. Then when you turn it upside down and give it a little spin, it will create a vortex as the water drains into the other bottle and the water will look like a tornado. It is pretty cool when it works. Next time we will have to buy an actual cap for this sort of thing. I just found out they sell them at Hobby Lobby for like $2. Oh well... His project was still cool.

The PTA president over the science fair was so creative. She made the periodic table of elements out of mini cupcakes on the refreshment table. It was pretty awesome. 

This was a fun night. The boys liked talking about their projects and we loved looking at all of the other kids' projects as well.