for Jimae from brian: "science yo!"

when the Christmas assignment fairy gave me the assignment of Jimae for Christmas, my first thought was "is there any two people in the family that are more dissimilar than Jimae and myself?" i needed to figure out how to channel my inner Jimae to discover what kind of service i could do that would represent Jimae's interests and/or modus operandi.

after much stressful deliberation, someone finally stumbled on an idea i thought i could make work: "why don't you throw a tea party for young girls the way Jimae does?"

and i thought "well, that would be humiliating and funny, so why not?!"

as i explored the idea further, i realized how i would feel if my 5-10 yr. old daughter got an invite to a tea party from a 46 year old man. that would be just creepy. couple that with the fact that it was this 46 year old man:

and you can clearly see that this is an idea that simply cannot be.

just.
plain.
wrong!

but then i thought "i wonder if it could be an 'inspired by' type of service instead of trying to be exactly like Jimae. is there some way i could pivot this idea that wouldn't be so creepy, yet still be something that's fun and engaging for kids.

science party!

and it hit me, i could throw a "science party" to get young kids interested in science!

instead of streamers, we'd have oobleck and dry ice! instead of different kinds of pastries, we'd have pop rocks and raisins! instead of tea, we'd have diet coke and mist!

i could use all those things to show some of the strange properties of everyday substances you find around the house and get kids excited about the magic in the world around them.

my excellent wife offered to extend the invitations to kids in the neighborhood (so it would be less creepy) and my talented sister-in-law, Laura, made the invitations.

now, i just needed to have experiments ready for the party. i had spent a couple of hours looking for suitable experiments to do and even tried a few out. some didn't really work out, but others had the "WOW" factor i was looking for and i figured it would be enough to engage the kids for an hour or so.

all morning long, as we were preparing the house and experiments, my kids would just blurt out "science, yo!" to stay motivated on the preparation. i think it was a default answer to the question of "how does that work?", "science, yo!"

when party time came, we had about 10 kids show up.

dancing raisins

for the first experiment, i showed the kids a video from the 80s of the claymation california grapes dancing and singing:

i asked the kids if they had ever seen raisins dance before and one kid blurted out "those aren't real raisins!" i responded, "you are right, but would you like to make real raisins dance?"

and, of course, what kid would say "no" to that? i had them hooked now.

so i poured some mist soda in a beaker and dropped some raisins in the soda to watch them dance:

and dance they did (not actual footage):

CO2 ballon

next, i placed two packets of poprocks in a ballon and upended it into a small bottle of sprite. the released CO2 of the poprocks mixed with the released CO2 of the soda causes it to inflate the balloon:

it was at this point that i had to let the kids know that they were not playing with soda and candy, but today they are seeing dangerous chemicals in action!

Diet Coke and Mentos

next, we went outside to show them the Diet Coke and Mentos trick:

this was, by far, their favorite. unfortunately, i only had purchased one bottle of diet coke.

Carbon Bubble

for the last of the CO2 experiments, we pulled out the dry ice and put it in a clear bowl with hot water. the kids ooohed and aaahed about the smoke that was being released. then, we took a soapy rag and wet the edge of the bowl and swiped the rag across the bowl to create a dry ice bubble:

Oobleck

lastly, i taught the kids to say "non-newtonian fluid."

"when your parents ask what you learned today, tell them that you learned what a non-newtonian fluid is."

it's basically a substance that has properties of both a fluid and a solid. we then made a non-newtonian fluid called "oobleck" by combining corn starch and water. when you do this, you create a substance you can pour like water, but when you try to punch it, it acts like a solid.

because oobleck can get messy, i asked my son to make it for us (wanted to keep my pristine lab coat clean :D)

i didn't get any footage of our oobleck in action, but here is a video to show how it works:

somebody also decided to make a small pool of oobleck:

conclusion

who knows what the legacy of the "science party" will be. at one point a kid looked at me in my lab coat, with a sense of wonder in his eyes and voiced breathlessly "are YOU a SCIENTIST?!" it was said with the same reverence and respect that you might expect a kid to ask if someone were a professional basketball player.

jimae's generous spirit of providing a magical time for kids might very well have a legacy of spawning a scientific interest in a child who then proceeds to move the world forward. but, even if it doesn't spark the next einstein or curie, and all it did was delight some kids for an hour on an otherwise dull saturday afternoon, it had the true spirit of jimae all over it.

so thanks for the inspiration jimae! i had such a good time that i'm thinking of making it an annual thing.