My son (10 years old) was a knight for Halloween. He was not impressed with the authenticity of his costume. He asked the night before Halloween if we could make some real chain maille. I said of course but not tonight.
The following Thanksgiving I was visiting my in-laws with the whole family. My father in law has a shop and I needed something to do. I looked up chain maille on Instrucables.com and headed to Home Depot to pick up supplies. For a madrel I used a bolt. I cut a slot in the end to "clamp" the wire. For wire I used drop ceiling suspension wire (straight). This yielded very stiff rings with a tight weave.Two and a half days later we had a coif head piece that fit my son.
This inspired him to do a research paper on William the Conquer er. The research paper ended with a "Night of the Notables" where each student is required to stand in front of a display about their chosen "Notable" subject in costume and talk to the student's and parents about their chosen "Notable" person. When my kids do papers like this I learn so much in the proofing process.
The Chain Maille Coif was a big hit. It got heavy on his head so my son took it off and used it as a "hook" to engage parents. He would hold it out to passing parents and ask "Do you want to feel how heavy medieval armour is?" I watched as one mother dragged her husband over to feel the armour.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Oobleck
With the sodium acetate demonstration for the 5th/6th grade class I also built a rig to demonstrate the properties of oobleck. I took the sub woofer out of a powered speaker system for the computer. I built a cone using resin and fleece fabric (I have seen that done on Pimp My Ride for speaker cases). I also built a 4 inch high flanged ring. To the bottom of the ring I affixed model airplane wing covering. For the sound I found MP3 files at various frequencies.
Oobleck is a mixture of corn starch and water. In the right mixture it crumbles under stress but flows when not stressed. On top of the 60Hz frequency it stands up and dances. There are various videos on Youtube of dancing Oobleck.
To start the demonstration I had three volunteers from the class mix three white powders with water. The first was flour and water, pancake batter. The next was powdered sugar and water, icing. The last was the corn starch and water and everyone could see it was acting differently. Especially when it is held upside down for a short time over a child's head.
Next I loaded it in the machine and showed standing waves at lower frequencies, but the fun really starts at 60Hz.
I had fun making the rig. The kids all had fun watching the oobleck dance and making a sample of oobleck to take home. I didn't hear from any parents who were uhappy about the mystery substance that the kids came home with.
Oobleck is a mixture of corn starch and water. In the right mixture it crumbles under stress but flows when not stressed. On top of the 60Hz frequency it stands up and dances. There are various videos on Youtube of dancing Oobleck.
To start the demonstration I had three volunteers from the class mix three white powders with water. The first was flour and water, pancake batter. The next was powdered sugar and water, icing. The last was the corn starch and water and everyone could see it was acting differently. Especially when it is held upside down for a short time over a child's head.
Next I loaded it in the machine and showed standing waves at lower frequencies, but the fun really starts at 60Hz.
I had fun making the rig. The kids all had fun watching the oobleck dance and making a sample of oobleck to take home. I didn't hear from any parents who were uhappy about the mystery substance that the kids came home with.
Trebuchet
One of my first adventures in making was a trebuchet. The inspiration came from the Nova episode where they built and tested a trebuchet. I watched that with my two older children (10 and 8) My son (10) asked about a month later if we could build one. I said of course. We started with some internet searches to see what others had done. I found some diagrams that looked good but were a little small. We built ours a little bigger (about 3 foot high pivot point).
My wife was not so excited about building a weapon. When she suggested we use it as a science fair project, I agreed and all was ok. A few good days in the shop and we had an operational weapon, I mean science fair project.
The first firing threw a baseball about 60 feet. We quickly lost the baseball in the forest and switched over to rocks. We had some great throws into the forest. Then we discovered really light rocks land right in front of the machine and really big rocks can go straight up. A rock flying straight up 60 feet takes a while to land. That is a confusing few moments followed by a few moments of terror. Except for the science fair experiment we stuck to launching watter balloons after the short experiment with rocks.
For the science fair part I drilled holes in a dozen tennis balls and filled them with varying amounts of silicone caulk. The science was charting the different ranges from the different masses.
Shortly after we built the trebuchet I took the two kids to the Make Faire in San Mateo (2007). They announced the King of Fling competition but we already had plane tickets and the trebuchet was much too large and heavy to check as luggage, but we had a great time watching the other catapults. We drove to the Faire this year (2008) but alas no king of fling competition was held.
My wife was not so excited about building a weapon. When she suggested we use it as a science fair project, I agreed and all was ok. A few good days in the shop and we had an operational weapon, I mean science fair project.
The first firing threw a baseball about 60 feet. We quickly lost the baseball in the forest and switched over to rocks. We had some great throws into the forest. Then we discovered really light rocks land right in front of the machine and really big rocks can go straight up. A rock flying straight up 60 feet takes a while to land. That is a confusing few moments followed by a few moments of terror. Except for the science fair experiment we stuck to launching watter balloons after the short experiment with rocks.
For the science fair part I drilled holes in a dozen tennis balls and filled them with varying amounts of silicone caulk. The science was charting the different ranges from the different masses.
Shortly after we built the trebuchet I took the two kids to the Make Faire in San Mateo (2007). They announced the King of Fling competition but we already had plane tickets and the trebuchet was much too large and heavy to check as luggage, but we had a great time watching the other catapults. We drove to the Faire this year (2008) but alas no king of fling competition was held.
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