5th Grade Science Fair.

Last Friday night there was a big 5th grade science fair at Kevin's school and we HAD to go. I'm glad we did. It was very neat and huge! The students had been working in groups on science projects and they had to make a big display of what their project was and what was the outcome. Kevin's project was eating different flavors of Pringle's Potato Chips after smelling a dill pickle. They were seeing if the pickle would trick the brain into thinking the chip tasted different. Interesting....

At the science fair they had snakes, lizards, turtles, hedgehogs, and birds of prey. They even had a little alligator. Kevin LOVED those. In the main gym they had all sorts of different science experiments. I completely failed the smelling experiment. You had to pick up a little film canister with a hole in the lid and see if you could identify the scent. Then you put the canister on the picture of what the scent was. I got 2 out 8 correct. I got maple syrup and black licorice correct. One of the canisters I couldn't smell anything and two of the canisters smelled the same. So much for my sniffer...

They also had a section where you could look under different microscopes. That was very interesting. They had this really neat hand held microscopic device that displayed the image on a screen on the wall. You held the lens (with a light) to something such as your jacket, skin, shirt, hair, ect...and then you could see it magnified on the screen. She said that type of scope is used in alot of crime labs and you can even take a photograph of the image. Very cool.

Outdoors they had all sorts of telescopes pointed at the moon. That was really neat. One of the scopes you could see the moon very close. The astronomer by the scope said "See the middle crater with a spec in the middle that looks white?". I said "Yes". He said "That is a mountain in the middle of a moon crater and the white color is the sun reflecting off of it." Wow, amazing! Then he explained what the first early astronomers used for telescopes, which were very simplistic and amazing they could see anything at all.