The Tingle Factor Box

Roy Creates a Phenakistoscope

This week, Roy wanted to try his hand at making an old fashioned optical toy. Roy is fascinated by optical toys, particularly the very early ones like the phenakistoscope. The Phenakistoscope is a Victorian toy made of a flat disk with slits around the outside. It was created in 1832 by the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and when it was spun in front of a mirror, it made the images on it appear to move. Roy thought creating his own shouldn’t be too hard and was thrilled with the results. So this week, Roy Creates a Phenakistoscope.

You Will Need:

• A copy of the template (pictured above). Press on the picture to open it, and then print!
• Heavy paper or cardboard (dark colours work better – Roy used an old cardboard folder)
• Pens and pencils to draw your pictures
• Glue
• Scissors
• A mirror

Method:

• Glue the template sheet onto your cardboard as Roy is doing

• Cut out the template

• Draw a series of pictures in the 'frames' of the template (between the slits). Try to choose a simple image and make sure it stands out clearly (either use thick, dark lines, or colour it with bright colours). Make each image slightly different from the one before. Most people who make a phenakistoscope make the images move in a sequence, so the first and last pictures are similar, so they move flawlessly up and down. Roy decided to copy one of the old pictures he found online though, by making a mouse run across the page and disappear!

• Poke a pencil through the hole (marked in the middle of the template)
• Hold the phenakistoscope near your face, in front of the mirror, with the pictures you drew facing the mirror. Use the pencil to spin the disk and look through the slits you cut to see your picture moving!

Roy Creates Magic Colour Changing Drops

A few weeks ago, Roy tried out an experiment with red cabbage. He added all sorts of household products to the concentrated juice of red cabbage to see what colours the cabbage turned. Some went a range of reds and pinks, showing they were acids, while others went blues, greens and yellows, showing they were bases. The kids were amazed at the changes in colour, and Roy thought it might be fun to show the experiment in reverse. So, he arranged a set of cups with clear liquid, and added a few drops the vibrantly purple red cabbage juice to them to see what would happen, thus inventing ‘Roys Magic, Colour Changing Drops’ as the children called them. He thought he would share how to do this with his online friends so they too could shock and amaze their family and friends.

You Will Need:

• Red cabbage juice. To see Roys instructions on turning red cabbage into red cabbage juice, visit his earlier post by clicking here.
• An old eye dropper or teaspoon
• A variety of clear liquids. Roy used:
  • Lemonade
  • Citric acid, dissolved in water
  • Bicarbonate soda, dissolved in water
  • Tartaric acid, dissolved in water
  • White vinegar
  • Soap, dissolved in water
  • Dishwashing powder, dissolved in water
  • Clothes washing powder, dissolved in water
  • Cloudy ammonia (if you use this, you will need an adult to help)

Method:

• First, set up your cups. You will want to label each with what they contain, so that you know what it is which produces the response. Roy used little strips of masking tape and a pen to label them, as he did for the last experiment. He then turned the labels so that they were facing away from him.
• When the liquids are all prepared (no grit from the dissolved substances, clear and without any bubbles on the surface) drop a few drops of the red cabbage juice into each cup. If you like, swirl it around to get the colour change throughout.

• Has the juice changed colour? What colour has it turned?

• You can turn the liquids white/clear again by combining an acid with a base, a little at a time. You can tell how strong an acid is by how much of the base it takes to turn it back to a 'clear' liquid, and vice versa.

Roy Creates Roy's Marvellous Medicine - From Cabbages!

This week, Roy decided it was time to do an experiment. He had been reading Roald Dahl’s book ‘Georges Marvellous Medicine’, and wanted to have a go at making his own version. The question was, how? His Grandma was cooking red cabbage for dinner and decided to give him a surprise by doing some ‘magic’ with the cooking liquid. She put some in a glass and added a little household cleaner and wow – suddenly instead of being purple the liquid was green! Roy thought this was amazing, and decided that not only did he want to see what other things he could add to change the liquids colour, but that he wanted to show his friends how to do it too.

NOTE: This medicine is purely for the appearance. DO NOT drink it!

You Will Need:

• Red cabbage
• Water
• A saucepan
• Clear, disposable plastic cups
• Masking tape and a pen
• A variety of household products. You will need an adult to help with the adding of these, and Roy suggests you don't use dangerous household chemicals like drain cleaner. You can get good reactions with less dangerous things. Roy called these ‘additives’ and used:
  • Cloudy ammonia (this smells pretty bad and you shouldn't breath the fumes)
  • Dishwashing powder
  • Washing up liquid
  • Clothes washing powder
  • Antacid
  • Yogurt
  • Citric acid
  • Cream of Tartar
  • Bicarb soda
  • Lemon Juice
  • Vinegar
  • Denture Cleaner
  • Kitchen cleaner (Spray and Wipe or Ajax etc)
  • Toothpaste
  • Soft drink

Use your imagination! You can test whatever you like - just make sure they are safe!

Method:

• First, you need to thoroughly overcook the red cabbage. Roughly chop the cabbage, put in into a pot and then add some water. You will need enough water to boil the cabbage in. Put the cabbage on the stove and cook it, for at least half an hour. Warning – this will smell really bad, a bit like really, really dirty socks!

• Strain the cabbage liquid and throw away the overcooked cabbage. Pour the liquid into a jar and put in the fridge to cool off (and stop it going off).
• Prepare the disposable cups. You want one cup per ‘additive’, and so that you know what you added to each, pull off a strip of masking tape, stick it to the outside of the cup and write what you will add on it. Remember to keep one cup as a ‘control’ with only cabbage water in it!
• Dilute the liquid a little (if it seems very concentrated). After boiling your cabbage for so long, the liquid may be very concentrated (and very smelly). Add some water to it (about a ¼ of the total amount)

• Divide the liquid between your cups. You want about the same amount in each cup.

• Now, start adding things! Gently stir or swirl the liquid around once you have added things like citric acid, so that they dissolve.
• Watch the colours change! Some will be immediate, strong changes, and some will change over time. We left ours to finish changing for about 5 hours. You will see colours ranging from reds, pinks and purples to blues, greens and yellows.

• Line the cups up from most acidic (red) to most basic (yellow).

What Is Happening?

Red cabbage contains something called flavin, a natural ‘ph indicator’. When you boil the red cabbage you will find the water turns a vivid purple colour, having extracted the dye from the cabbage, but you will also have extracted the flavin.

So what is a ph indicator? Ph measures how acidic or basic something is. The Ph scale ranges from 0 to 14, with Ph less than 7 being acidic, greater than 7 being basic and 7 itself being neutral. A ph indicator is something which can be added to something (usually a solution) to tell you where on the ph spectrum it sits. Red cabbage juice does this by changing the colour of the solution. When you add a product to it, it will cause it to change colour depending on how acidic or basic it is.

When you use red cabbage as an indicator, you will discover that the more acidic, the redder the colour will become. Acidic solutions will range in colour from pink right into vivid reds. Purple, as the colour closest to the normal colour of red cabbage juice is the least acidic, and closest to the ‘control’ of normal red cabbage juice. Pink is in the middle while reds indicate very acidic solutions. The most acidic solution Roy tried was citric acid, then lemon juice, then vinegar. Even lemonade is acidic!

Base solutions will range in colour from blue to green to yellow. Blue, being the closest to the natural purple of red cabbage juice is the least ‘basic’, while green is in the middle and yellow indicates the most basic solutions. Roys most basic solution was made using dishwashing powder.

You will find that some products, when added to the red cabbage juice turn a range of purples. Sometimes, these changes are quite difficult to see, as they can be very subtle differences from the original purple solution. The greater the change, the less neutral a solution is. If the solution takes on a red tinge, it is on the acidic side of neutral, while if it takes on a blue tinge, it is on the basic side.

Roy Creates A Mini Lava Lamp In A Glass

This week, Roy decided to continue with the science theme. The children were fascinated by all the different experiments you can do at home, and Roy wanted to share another home experiment with his online friends. It had to be something the children could easily do themselves, and it had to be safe. It also had to be reasonably tidy - his Grandma didn't want another mess this week. This eliminated a lot of his favourite experiments, but made his decision much easier. The lava lamp in a glass is not only safe and clean, it is a really interesting experiment to watch. So this week, Roy Creates A Mini Lava Lamp In A Glass.

Roy Creates Oobleck - Strangely Solid Slime

This week, being Science Week in Australia, Roy decided it would be the perfect time to get into science. He always enjoys science experiments, and loves to show the children he knows some of the things he has learned. The question was, which to show you this week. He has done several experiments with the children, and they were really interested in one in particular - a slime, often known as Oobleck, after a book by Dr Seuss. It is a strange slimey goo, which, when it is at room temperature, acts like both a liquid and a solid. The kids were fascinated and wanted to know how it works. So this week, Roy Creates Oobleck - Strangely Solid Slime.

Roy Creates Fizzy Bath Powder

This week, with Mothers Day coming up, Roy decided to make something as a gift for his Grandma. At times like Mothers Day Mums are often given lots of chocolate and other sweet treats but with Easter not being very long ago, he thought he would prefer to make something to pamper his Grandma in a different way. Then, he came across a recipe for a bath powder in one of his old 'Home Health' books from the early 1900s. It was a really simple recipe and could be made in a very small quantity, right through to a very large amount, and promised a soothing, fizzy bath. He thought this would be perfect. So this week, Roy Creates Fizzy Bath Powders

Roy Creates A Pepper's Ghost

Just before school broke up for a couple of weeks of holidays, the children became really interested in optical tricks. Recently, they have also been getting really excited about Halloween. They have been asking about whether there were any cool optical tricks which they could use to haunt their friends with and when I told Roy about this, he suggested we learn to do a small scale version of a famous Victorian Theatre Trick - Pepper's Ghost. Now, we have perfected the act and are ready to teach all our online friends!

Roy Creates Kaleidoscopic Milk

This week, Roy and I decided that we wanted to keep the ball rolling with our new experiments. The days have been mostly grey lately and we really wanted to see a bit of colour. Earlier this week we were looking at Roy's Grandma's kaleidoscope and its swirling, changing colours. I remembered this simple experiment which makes milk swirl with colour, like a kaleidoscope.  So this week, for those of you who want a bit of colour in your lives, Roy and I will show you how to make kaleidoscopic milk!

You Will Need:

 

• Full cream (also known as full fat) milk. Don't try using low fat milk or the experiment won't work.
• Detergent (washing up liquid)
• Liquid food colouring - Roy and I used a couple of drops each of red, blue, green and yellow
• A plate with a rim - you need to put your milk on the plate so make sure it has enough rim that it  won't spill.
• 5 teaspoons.
• A bowl (for your dirty spoons)

Method:

• Put a layer of milk onto your plate.

• Pour a little food colouring onto a teaspoon and add about 4 drops to the milk. Repeat this for each colour, but make sure you use a different teaspoon each time. That way, if you have too much you can always tip some back into the bottle! You want to put your food colouring in the centre of the plate, as shown in the photo below!

• Pour a little detergent into your 5th spoon and use this to add a couple of drops of detergent to the very centre of your colour splodges!

• Watch as the milk seems to come to life, pulsing and moving the colours around and (eventually, if you leave it long enough!) merging them together.

What's Happening And Why?

Milk is made up of lots of different things, water, fat, sugar, protein, vitamins and minerals. The water in the milk means that it has a similar surface tension to water. This means that when you drop the food colourings onto the milk they sit there. When you add detergent though, lots of things start to happen. The detergent breaks the bonds which hold the water together so the food colouring can move about. The detergent also change the bonds which suspend the proteins in the milk and they start to move all over the place! On top of that, the soap molecules join together to form what we call micelle. These move the fat around, dispersing it through the milk. This is similar to what happens when you wash the dishes! When the soap and fat are distributed through the milk the movement stops. Normally, the whole process would be invisible but because of the food colouring, we can see everything as it happens!

Now, something for you to explore yourself - what happens if you add more detergent in spots where the colour has pooled when most of the reaction has already finished?

Roy Creates Mini Explosions - Popcorn!

This week, Roy has decided to add a new section into his creations. He has noticed that the children are fascinated by simple science experiments and constantly asking how and why things happen. He decided it would be great if occasionally we could intersperse our cooking and craft with experiments and thought that the science behind popcorn would be a perfect introduction - even better, the results are edible! The children have been using the microwave popcorn bags and noticed that sometimes very little of the corn inside actually pops. Sometimes, they have tried to give the bag longer in hopes that the popping will eventually occur, but often this results in burned corn kernels with no more popping. So why does popcorn pop, and more importantly, why does it sometimes refuse to pop!