Science Camp Experiment: Invisible Ink
Dear Mom, You know what’s weird about the counselors here? They encourage us to pass secret notes during lab! It’s not like we’re sneaking around though. It’s part of an experiment. We made invisible ink this week and we have been sending each other secret messages ever since! Sometimes the counselors even send us messages too! It’s really easy making invisible ink. Here’s how you do it: What you need: - 2 tablespoons lemon juice - ½ teaspoon water - Q tip - Paper - Lamp - An adult assistant What you do: Mix the lemon juice and the water in a small cup. Dip the Q tip into the lemon mixture and use it to write your message on the paper. Let the lemon juice dry and the message should disappear. In order to read your message, have an adult assistant help you hold it close to a light bulb, until the heat from the light bulb turns the lemon juice brown. Remember these instructions, mom, because the next letter you get from me might LOOK blank, but hold it up to a light and you’ll get a surprise! Miss you! Love Alex
Postcard from Alex
Dear Sparky Hi! How’s it going at your uncle’s shop? I hope you’re not too busy. Science camp is so much fun, but Booger kind of needs to chill. I mean, camp has all these awesome activities, like swimming and hiking and crafting, but Booger gets frustrated any time we’re not doing science all the time. So whenever we have to leave the lab he gets in a mood and is not really fun to be around. The silly thing is – we are doing science all the time anyway. At swimming, we have to try to figure out the time based on the sun’s position in the sky, and when we go hiking we collect samples to study in the biology lab and figure out the height of trees from their shadows. And often our crafting projects are for use in the lab, like when we built this cool volcano out of papier mache and then we made our own lava in the lab. But whatever. Booger usually chills after a bit and we can still have fun. And it really is a neat camp – I’m so glad he talked me into coming. Say hi to everyone for … Read more
Fun from Science Camp!
Dear Mom, I know that I said I didn’t want to go when you first mentioned it but I am sure glad I did because Booger and I are having a great time at Science Camp! It’s cool having a friend from home to hang out with while I’m here and Booger knows all about science so he helps me out with our experiments. We just finished a project today that was so much fun! We made a volcano! You know when you mix baking soda and vinegar and you get this really wild reaction? Well, the counselors challenged us to come up with the most realistic looking volcano. Both the volcano and the lava were supposed to look real so Booger and I spent hours building our mountain out of paper maché and then we painted. Booger is all about research so he downloaded lots and lots of pictures of real volcanoes and I added the detail to ours really carefully with a tiny paintbrush. Then, the really hard part was coming up with the right mixture for the lava that would look like real lava. Booger had the idea to mix equal parts of white glue and water … Read more
Booger writes home
Dear Sparky, Science Camp is awesome! Well, I know I just got here yesterday, and to be honest we haven’t actually done any real science yet, but I’m still having lots of fun! I’m so glad that Alex came with me because it’s really nice having someone you know to share a bunk with. When we got here we unpacked in our cabin and then they broke us up into groups and took us on a tour of the camp. You should see the labs! They have every piece of scientific equipment you could imagine! There’s also a really nice beach because unfortunately we don’t get to do science ALL the time. They expect us to go outside and swim and hike and stuff too. Alex thinks that is cool, but between you and me I’m not so crazy about wasting all that valuable research time away from the lab! After our tour it was almost time for dinner and so we had a weenie roast around the campfire. As we roasted our weenies one of the counselors explained how the structural composition of the meat changes when it is exposed to fire. … Read more
