Colorful cauliflower

We had some extra cauliflower so we decided to do a capillary action experiment. We filled a small glass with water and food coloring and suspended some cauliflower over it with the stem in the water. We let it sit out overnight and in the morning Jr. scientist A came bounding over to me shouting "the experiment worked!" Clearly a winner.

Noisy noisy balloon

I found a fun sound experiment where you drop a nut (the metal type) into a balloon and inflate the balloon. When you shake the balloon you can get the nut to circle around inside, making a neat whirring sound (thanks to the repeated pattern of the edges). Jr scientists A and E had fun playing with this one. Making the sound is clearly easy enough for a baby - Jr scientist E had no trouble making it go. The only downside is that the nut starts to make tiny tears in the balloon after a few minutes, resulting in an increasingly small (and less fun) balloon. Maybe we should start buying balloons in bulk.

The curious case of gak

We made a batch of gak - mixing cornstarch and water to make something between a liquid and a solid. Jr. scientist A had fun playing with it and making quite a mess. Jr. scientist E's reaction was very interesting. I dipped her hand into the gak slowly (making the gak act like a liquid) and then dipped her hand into the gak quickly (making it act more like a solid). She got a very curious look on her face when the previously liquid gak suddenly seemed solid. I think it dawned on her that something surprising was going on. It was pretty neat to see.

Jr. scientist A's experiment

A day after the anti-gravity pepper experiment where we used electrostatic charge to draw pepper to a balloon or plastic spoon, Jr. scientist A came up with a new experiment all on his own. He decided to try to catch light by rubbing a spoon against his head and holding the spoon near a light. He was off on a couple of details from our previous experiment (the spoon needs to be plastic and it only works with very light objects that can build up a charge), but it was definitely the most sophisticated experiment he's come up with to date.