Boys Will Be Boys

Before we get to the "boys will be boys" part, allow me to insert this picture of time Betsy spent in the hot tub with Clara and Henry. Forgot to add it to yesterday's posting. She's reading a book, or attempting to, and they had the hot tub full of bath toys. I think this is the first time I ever saw a hot tub with bath toys in it. We had the temperature turned down to make it more like a warm swimming pool, and I think the grandkids loved it.

Now, back to the "boys will be boys" part. You see, we boys, and I suppose girls too, if the truth be told, are very inquisitive about mechanical things, science, gadgets, and the like. And honestly, some of the inquisitiveness or curiosity manifests itself through our having to make semi-dangerous things or having to blow things up or whatever. When I was young, there was a great TV show called Watch Mr. Wizard featuring a man named Don Herbert who showed young people how to do various science experiments at home. (Read about the show by clicking here, if you like.) Magazines such as Boys Life and Popular Mechanics were also great sources for ideas. For awhile, it seemed that litigation made us all maybe too seriously concerned about the safety of toys and such, and the idea of providing information that might lead a young person to attempt something dangerous was definitely tamped down. However, in recent years some interesting books have appeared, including this one:

It will probably not be a surprise to you that I own a copy of the above book, along with others, including Backyard Ballistics and The Art of the Catapult. I have these with me here at the lake, and Henry seemed to enjoy thumbing through them.

Back in Iowa, over the 4th, he wanted to build something in my shop, which of course pleases me. We have done this several times, and I love it that he wants to learn about tools and to be constructive. Anyway, I didn't have anything in particular in mind to build, but we eventually landed on the idea of a small catapult. Then, when we got to the lake, we decided to make a bigger one. So, here are Pete, Henry and I building a Wyvern torsion catapult. In addition to carpentry techniques, I rationalize that this project helped Henry learn some things about physics and history.

Henry and his dad begin by building the base frame, while I cut other parts on my saw.

The torsion part comes from a twisted rope, which we are threading back and forth between the frame and the arm here.

When it is tightly twisted, it acts as a spring to propel the arm. Here is Henry trying it out. He was excited about it, but I was honestly disappointed that we didn't get more distance in the items we launched. (Henry agreed to leave it here, and I encouraged him to think about how to make it work better. So, we may work on improvements next year or whenever he comes for another visit.) We took it down to the dock and launched rocks out into the lake.

Here is Henry posing with each of the catapults we made. He took the small one home.

In the following video, Henry describes these projects.

Another project we did together involved a bottle of Diet Coke and a roll of Mentos candies. You may know about this little experiment, which was described in the Totally Irresponsible Science book. I had heard of this before but had never seen it done. The candies provide a surface that makes the carbonation in the Diet Coke foam very, very rapidly. There are different ways of doing this, including one which effectively turns the bottle into a rocket. We preferred to try the version that turns the Coke into a fountain, though we all feared that we were going to be showered with Coke. The latter point will explain my total lack of gracefulness in the following video as I attempt to back away from the bottle after dropping in the Mentos.

Here is a still shot in case you missed how high the fountain reached. It really was quite amazing.

Henry did some other experiments too, including attempting to blow up plastics bags containing baking soda and vinegar and floating a ping pong ball in a vertical stream of air. Very cool stuff. We had lots of fun, and we haven't even worked all the way through the books yet!