Weekly Wrap UP 1/22/16

Happy Birthday to Firedrake who turned  14 years old this week!!!

She choose to go out for dinner at her favorite restaurant the Melting Pot

The stain glass lamp that I made for her birthday 

Look what we found feeding at our bird feeder-- a Pileated Woodpecker

We took a field trip to our favorite museum-- The City museum and met up with some friends.  We tried to hit this museum at least twice a year when we can get in for homeschool price of $5 which is much better than the normal $12 admission fee.

The hubs and I had a date night.  We participated in another Trivia night for a charity event.  Trivia nights are very big here in the St. Louis area!  Our team tied for second place, but after the tie breaker we came in third.   YAY team!

These were the topics for the night--we scored 91 which means we missed only 9 questions at of 100. 

Firedrake worked on a Biology lab with her Dad measuring how much glucose is released from certain foods---basically she measured farts:) as she put it!

First they smashed up some beans pills 

Got they vegetable samples-- they used Kidney beans, black beans and broccoli as they samples

Mixed up the individual veggies into s slurry juice and sieved it with cheese cloth 

measured the level of glucose 

and recorded their results 

My husband has been doing a great job with teaching Firedrake biology this year and I know it has been adding to his work load.  I really do appreciate him for taking on this responsibly as it frees me up to do other things for the kids school.

MarioFan is continuing to work on engineering and bridges.  We have spent the week looking at bridge structures and why certain ones are better than others. First we looked at which pillar would be stronger, columns versus a more triangular shape and why.

We used a single sheet of paper to construct each pillar  and then places books on top to see which would hold up better.   

We tried the same again for the triangular pillars.  Would you believe I forgot to count the number of books each took.  But it was impressive--the triangle pillar won out by only one book

Next we read that Beam bridges are the simplest and earliest form of bridges.  Anything could make a beam bridge but the one draw back is they can only be used for short distances and we read why and did a simple experiment to look at the disadvantages of a beam bridge.

Taking a card stock and placing it over two books we tried to balance one of MarioFans light weight figures

It wasn't successful and we discuss previous weeks strategies again showing how weak this bridge system can be.

Next we read that Arch bridges were also one of the oldest bridge systems around and how the Romans constructed them.  We again did an experiment to demonstrated the pros and cons of this bridge.

An arch bridge with no abutments 

and the results.

Next we placed the arch bridge between two strong abutments (heavy books)

Success!  We discuss the forces that were placed on this bridge and why it worked!

 Next week MarioFan will be building his own arch bridges, one out of plaster and one with his K'nex kits.  We are continuing to look at the vocabulary, forces, pro and cons of the arch bridge and the history of this type of bridge!