Rapid Color Changing Chemistry!

Sometimes it’s hard to tell SCIENCE from MAGIC - and this little demonstration is a great example of that. In this experiment you will watch an almost clear liquid suddenly turn dark blue in a flash. It takes a bit of preparation, and probably a trip to the pharmacy for materials, but we think it’s worth it.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION: This experiment should only be done with the help of an adult. Iodine will stain just about anything it touches and it can be hazardous. Hydrogen peroxide can cause eye and skin irritation - safety goggles are needed throughout the experiment. Be sure your helpful adult reads the caution labels on each container.

• 3 clear plastic cups 4 ounces or larger
• A 1000 mg Vitamin C tablet from the pharmacy (you can also use two 500mg)
• Tincture of iodine (2%) also from the pharmacy
• Hydrogen peroxide (3%) yep, also from the pharmacy
• Liquid laundry starch (see below for alternatives)
• Safety goggles
• Measuring spoons
• Measuring cup
• An adult helper

Put on those safety goggles and mash the 1000 mg Vitamin C tablet by placing it into a plastic bag and crushing it with a rolling pin or the back of a large spoon. Get it into as much of a fine powder as possible. Then put all the powder in the first cup and add 2 ounces (60 ml) of warm water. Stir for at least 30 seconds. (The water may be a little cloudy) Let’s call this “LIQUID A”

Now put 1 teaspoon (5 ml) of your LIQUID A into a new cup and add to it: 2 oz (60 ml) of warm water and 1 teaspoon (5 ml) of the iodine. Notice the brown iodine turned clear! Let’s call this “LIQUID B.” By the way, you’re done with LIQUID A - you can put it aside.

In the last cup, mix 2 oz of warm water, 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) of the hydrogen peroxide and 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml) of the liquid starch. This is, you guessed it, “LIQUID C”

Okay, that was a lot of preparation, on to the fun part. Gather the friends and family and pour all of LIQUID B into LIQUID C. Then pour them back and fourth between the 2 cups a few times. Place the cup down and observe….be patient....somewhere between a few seconds and a few minutes, the liquid will suddenly turn dark blue!

This is an example of the chemical reaction know as the IODINECLOCK REACTION. It is called a clock reaction because you can change the amount if time it takes for the liquids to turn blue. (see experiments below) The chemistry of the demonstration gets a bit complicated, but basically it is a battle of chemistry between the starch which is trying to turn the iodine blue, and the Vitamin C which is keeping it from turning blue. Eventually the Vitamin C loses and, bam! - you get instant blueness.

Note: If you do not have liquid starch, you can also use 1/2 teaspoon of corn starch or potato starch. The liquids will be more cloudy and the reaction will happen a bit more slowly, but it’s still impressive.

Clean up: Carefully pour all liquids down the drain with plenty of water and wash your hands. Recycle the cups or dispose of them in the trash.

The project above is a DEMONSTRATION. To make it a true experiment, you can try to answer these questions:

    1. Does the temperature of the water affect how quickly the liquids turn blue?
    2. Does the amount of Vitamin C added (Liquid A) affect how fast the liquid turns blue?
    3. Does stirring the liquids more affect how fast the liquids turn blue?

(Source: www.sciencebob.com)

Mirror, Mirror

The two-year-old in the corner clutches her collection of candy wrappers and odd papers to herself as if they were dragon's horde. The stripped vault I've closed us in--me and twenty-seven children--shudders once, twice, and the already dim lighting wanes; the two-year-old looks briefly up toward the lights set around the edges of the metal ceiling, but is far more interested in the crinkling sound of her treasures.

We've been in the vault too long. The sealed room smells of a day's worth of urine and worse. Resilient, adaptable, none of the children cry out at this latest attack. The wispy hair that frames the two-year-old's face seems to glow even in the low light, and I find myself wondering if all two-year-olds look as cherubic. Not that I really care.

"What ever happened to the magic mirror?" asks an older girl sitting amid five other girls quietly clinging to each other. They're six, eight, maybe ten years old. I suppose I should know, this being my third child rescue detail, but frankly, I've never much paid attention to children--at least not until a girl is old enough to be sexually interesting or a guy old enough to be trouble. Child rescue wasn't my idea of how to get involved in the war. I wanted the real work of war. Man against the Ants. Fights behind enemy lines. Impossible odds. Call me a romantic.

"That's the end," I tell her. "The evil queen is dead, and the prince and princess live happily ever after." The girl's dark eyes never leave mine and I realize that she has already perfected the feminine art of pouting. She frees her hand from the clutches of a friend, and pulls at the dark curls that fall over her shoulder. The vault shudders again, and in the blinking of the lights I picture the curls spilled over her dead face, no longer as lustrous, but even in death still obscenely curly. Somehow, I think, the curls should die too.

"Tell the girl what she wants to know." The falsely deep voice accompanies a jab in my ribs from behind. I raise my hands slowly. The girl's younger brother steps around me, arms poised as though cradling a rifle, and grins at me. "Otherwise, I'll have to shoot ya."

The two-year-old cries out as two wrestling tomboys knock her over, and continue unheeding of her protests. I start to lift myself from my position on the floor, but before I can loose myself from the open-mouthed boy asleep in my lap, the cherub has already re-collected her horde and is quietly transferring the pile, one piece at a time, from beside her left knee to a spot beside her right. A small boy beside her parts and combs his hair with his father's comb as he has already done countless times over the past several hours.

"What ever happened to the magic mirror?" the girl asks again, louder this time. The pile of girls amidst which she sits blinks at me, waiting. My mind races in blank circles like a one-legged robot. After the adrenaline of locating the children--two or three at a time, rushing them quietly and in an ever increasing group toward the safety of this vault, and then hour upon hour of stories and the soft sternness of sudden fatherhood--my mind is numb. I long for the stark clarity of the heated battle.

From my left: "Are you our hero?" asks a thin morose boy who, until this moment, has not spoken during the twenty-six and a half hours we've been in the vault. His voice is very small. "Are you like Captain Star, here to save us?" He is standing extremely close to me, chin to chest, looking out at me from under long, straight bangs. His hands fidget constantly with his fly.

"I'm just a Lieutenant, kid," I answer him, flip in my exhaustion. His shoulders slump and his eyes drop as he turns and shuffles back to the boxes in the corner that he's been hiding in. "Hey kid," I call after him, "Captain Star sent me, okay? I'm going to do my best to--"

A violent blast rocks the vault and sends the children screaming. The blackness in side is complete. I am surrounded by a many-limbed, wet and sobbing mass, clutching at me as though it would drown without me. I speak loudly, and with the warm voice of authority that the children are looking for.

"Everything is going to be okay," I say over and over, feeling myself rock with the dreamy monotony of the phrase. "I'm here to protect you." Only the last is a sure thing. The blast was close: the generator in this sector wouldn't have gone down without a direct hit from a demi-nuke or worse. Either our guys just broke through and we'll be rushing out into the cruel efficiency of the extraction team that gets us off-station, or we'll soon be dead. All except those curls.
I have orders to kill the children rather than let them be taken, and I've seen enough of the human zombies fighting for their side to want to include myself in the list of casualties if it comes to capture.

The screaming has stopped, although the sobbing hasn't. Some older child has finally found his way to the two-year-old and is comforting her in a low lulling voice. Although I can't see anything, I picture the boy rocking the baby in time to his chant. I wonder if they are related.

"Didn't someone ask me what happened to the magic mirror?" I ask into the rusty grinding of tired sobs. After a moment I hear a barely audible Yes.

I take a deep breath and wish to myself for the hundredth time that I had been a better marksman, so I could be shooting at Ants rather than pacifying children and waiting for... I don't want to think the word--DEATH--but I can smell it in the room. I'm no good at this. I find myself wanting to know the name of the girl who asked about the magic mirror, but I keep myself from asking. Better that they be nameless.

"Everybody gather 'round, close," I say. "I've got a secret." I pause for the drama. "I KNOW what happened to the magic mirror." I hiss the last as though I'm whispering, although it's loud enough for all to hear. I wait until the breathing around me is close and palpable. I pull the poison gas pellet from my vest, my hand bumping the gas mask that could save me if I had the urge to live. I used to wonder that they gave the soldier a chance to live through the poisoning, but after one GI who'd lost his mask let the whole group be captured rather than die with it, I quit wondering.
"This is the secret," I hiss. "I've got the magic mirror with me. It's been passed down through the generations by long lost relatives of the prince." Gullible in their neediness, no one challenges me. I hold the gas pellet high above my head glad the lights are out. "Lean in closer," I tell them, then: "I'm looking at it now. Can you see it?" The press of small bodies around me gets tighter as several voices whisper they cannot see it yet, and one authoritative voice announces that it can. In the dark I cannot tell if the voice belongs to a boy or a girl.

"The mirror is telling me everything is going to be all right. Can you see it yet?" A dull thud convinces me that, friend or foe, someone has closed on the vault. I pull the safety off with my teeth and put my thumb on the release. I think briefly of the explosives within the vault that will detonate when my ID beacon dies with me. If I've got to go, I'm going to take some Ants with me.

"SNOW WHITE, UNIT E. CAN YOU READ ME?" My comm unit cracks and squawks, and the children jump, screaming again, pressing even closer. I pull my hand from one child's death grip, afraid to lower the arm with the gas pellet, and pull the comm unit from my belt.

"Unit E, Snow White here. I read you. Over."

"WE'RE COMING IN." I hold my breath, thumb still poised over the gas release in the blackness, still ready to die, before the comm squawks again. "AUTHENTICATE LIMA BRAVO ZERO ZERO SIX NINER." It's the code that lets me know it's our guys. I remember to breathe.

"I authenticate Foxtrot Romeo." The comm chirps once and then is silent.

"What did I tell you?" I ask into the damp, uncanny quiet. "That's our guys coming to get us." The E-lights blink on to give credence to my words.

I am surrounded with shouts of "can I see the mirror?" and colorful bouncing mayhem but what grabs my attention as the drill is coming through the door is the two-year-old. She is pulling at my pants, repeatedly saying, "hey, hey, hey." When I finally look down she points to her nose, her head thrown back to show me.

"Nose," she says.

"That's right," I tell her. I don't need to know her name. It's enough to know that she might grow up to be the fairest one of all.

The End

by Davyne DeSye

The Adventures of Carbon and His Electron Collection

Once there was a lonely atom, who liked to play. His name was Carbon, and he lived on Street 4A in Tabletown. Carbon had 4 bigger brothers and sisters, named Silicon, Germanium, Tin, and Lead.

Carbon was very very small. In fact, he was soooo small, that to him, the period at the end of this sentence looked like the whole world.

Carbon had an electron collection, which he kept on his bookshelf. He liked to show off his electrons to his friends. Electrons were like fireflies only much much faster, and much much smaller. They could move this way ----->, and that way <-----, and spent most of their time spinning around in funny patterns. In fact, they were so fast that when they went by, all you saw was a blur, and you weren't really sure of if it went by over here, or over there, or even which way it went at all.

On the bottom shelf he kept 2 electrons. And on the top shelf he kept 4. These were his favorites, because they were the fastest, although they liked to roam around a bit too much.

Carbon liked his electron collection, it made him feel good. But it still looked incomplete. He had more space on the top shelf for 4 more, that he really wanted.

One day, while Carbon was out playing with his 4 favorite electrons, the two Oxygen twins came by. They were sad. They wanted to play with Carbon's roaming electrons, too, since their electrons were all locked up and couldn't run free. But Carbon couldn't decide what to do. He didn't want the Oxygen twins to take them and leave him without his favorite electrons, but he liked the Oxygen twins, and wanted them to be happy, too.

Then he had an idea. "Let's share them!" said Carbon.

And so they did. And Carbon and his two new friends formed a bond that would last for a long time.

(note: the idea is encapsulated in the title, 'create bedtime / fantasy stories that demonstrate science principles in interesting ways to young kids, so that they'll dream about them)
— RayfordSteele, Jul 18 2004

Self and Self

Jane woke Kim.

"You were dreaming," Jane whispered from the top bunk. "Twitching."

Kim scrunched her face as if searching the corners of her mind with a flashlight. The look of uncertainty upset Jane. Kim's face was her face, too. They were twins. Whatever Kim felt, Jane felt obliged to feel.

"Was I?" Kim asked.

"Tell me," Jane said.

"I can't. I don't remember the dream."

Jane glared at her. "You take watch now."

Kim huffed as if Jane had woken her because she couldn't keep her eyes open.

"You swore," Jane said.

Kim fingered her palm's scab and nodded.

"If I twitch," Jane said, "wake me. Don't let me dream like them."

"I won't."

"Pick at the scab," Jane said. "It'll keep you awake." She showed Kim her bloody palm, then climbed down and traded bunks.

She didn't know how she had expected an alien invasion to go, but this wasn't it. No spaceships, no soldiers, no violence. The enemy remained light-years away, until suddenly you dreamed their dreams for them and they dreamed yours. Then, the switch: you were in their bodies and they were in yours.

The morning alarm woke Jane. Kim peered down at her bleary-eyed, gave a weak smile. They headed downstairs.
In the kitchen, mom ran her hands over the honey-oak cabinets. Her lips parted with wonder as she opened one. The coffeepot bubbled and beeped, startling her.

"Mom?" Jane asked. Mom had always been spacey.

Still wearing her nightgown, she faced Jane and Kim with a hundred-yard stare.

"You're my daughters," she said, her words mushy.

Dreaming readied the aliens for human bodies, but tongues remained tricky for them.
Jane exchanged a concerned look with Kim. Kim switched on the radio. They packed lunches. Mom watched.
A newscast said it was patriotic to act as if nothing had changed.

"That's stupid," Jane said. "Like going down with a sinking ship."

Kim shrugged.

They went to school.

Jane faked a stomachache to get out of class. The nurse only stared at her, dumbly holding eye contact. Jane reported to the principal. He was gone, too. When she returned to class Mr. Luffler had taken it upon himself to prepare his students for "the inevitable transition" by recounting his wrong-dreams. He wriggled his arms in pantomime. The alien's were squid-type creatures who could clamber about on land. They communicated telepathically. Their planet had seasons, too. Their snow was more delightful than Earth snow. The way it evaporated when touched tickled. It even "smelled" better.

Jane met Kim after school and corroborated the list of those who had switched.

"Mickey, too," Kim said, her tone solemn. She had liked Mickey.

"He's barely fourteen," Jane said.

"His parents went early," Kim said, as if that explained things.

They rode the bus home. Mom had moved from the kitchen to the pantry.

During Jane's night watch, mom entered their bedroom with a steaming pot of oatmeal, corn, raisins, and noodles.

"You have to eat," mom said.

"It's three a.m.," Jane said.

Mom looked confused, then left.

"There goes the pantry," Kim said.

Jane nodded pensively. "We'll get by."

Mom had left the house by the time Jane led Kim downstairs in the morning. The pantry was ransacked. School had been cancelled. Too many bus drivers had switched overnight.

Jane made coffee. She didn't like it, didn't understand why adults liked it, but drank it anyway.

"Think the neighbors have eggs?" Kim asked.

Jane pressed their buzzer. No one answered, but the door was unlocked.

"We have to think about the future," Jane said, packing groceries into Kim's backpack.

Kim slouched under the increasing weight.

Donuts staled. Dishes piled up. Batteries died. Jane learned to drive. The aliens walked everywhere. Jane drove Kim to their new home near a grocery.

During her night watches, Jane scratched her palm until it wept puss. She consulted diagnosis charts and swiped antibiotics from a pharmacy. The pills knocked her out. When she woke, Kim lay beside her, sleeping, twitching. Jane woke her.

"I'm sorry," Kim said, turning her palm up. It had healed. "I was afraid of infection."

"Did you dream?"

"Yes," Kim said.

"Tell me."

"The snow tickled." Kim's face scrunched with apology.

Jane searched Kim's face, waiting to feel something.

She left a week of food for Kim, how long it usually took. A week later, Jane pulled her car alongside Kim on the sidewalk. Kim goggled at her. "You're my sister."

Jane left town.

In the nearest big city, Jane found people like herself, mostly her age, no adults. She organized them into reconnoitering troupes and night watches. The aliens organized, too, and resumed the roles their bodies had held. Jane's troupes hid in plain sight, taking jobs amongst the aliens at coffee shops, movie theaters, and loading docks for grocery money, rent, cigarettes. The aliens all but unsaw them.

At night, Jane teamed with a boy named Rod during the watches. She kissed him to stay awake.

A girl from her troupe became pregnant and went to the aliens for care.

A boy broke his ankle.

The aliens lured others away, one by one, by acting like they had before the switch.

"Only we are real," Jane said, holding Rod's hand.

He kissed her and left for work. When he didn't come home, Jane searched for him. She found him walking down the sidewalk with Kim, holding hands, mooning at her.

She went numb and slept and dreamed of alien snow. The dreams grew vivid, ticklish, then she awoke in an alien sea with two squid-type creatures staring at her.

"You're lost and scared," mom said. The words reverberated inside Jane like her brain was strung with piano wires. "We've been here longer. Let us help you."

"Go away," Jane said.

"Come here," Kim said. The Kim-squid glided toward her, its tentacles extended.

"I don't need you anymore!" Jane screamed.

"We're family," mom said.

Jane closed her eyes, leaned into the tentacled hugs, and learned how to cry.

The End

(by Jacob A. Boyd)

Mole

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, beyond the edge of a town nobody knows, down a long track in a dark wood, was a cave. Inside this cave lived a hermit who rarely spoke to people and instead preferred the company of animals, the trees, the flowers and insects and birds. By asking them very careful questions and listening very carefully to the answers, she learned a great many wonderful things, like how to cure diseases and keep her body and mind healthy through the years, where memories are stored when we sleep, the relationship between colors and music, and others that are not too numerous to recount but too numerous to recount here.

One day the hermit had a strange notion. She would tell a person about what she had learned, and that person would tell others, until everyone shared her knowledge. So she walked up the long track in the dark wood until she came to the town nobody knows, and she talked to one person and then another, something she almost never did. But nobody believed her, because she was a hermit who lived in a cave. So she walked down the long track in the dark wood, and she didn't come back.

The end.