VanCleave's Science Fun

Your Guide to Science Projects, Fun Experiments, and Science Research

Science Fair Projects:Green

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Notes from Janice’s Desk There are about 500 billion plastic bags produced a year worldwide and it takes up to 1,000 years for some of them to decompose. Daniel Burd discovered a way to make the plastic bags decompose in about 3 months. His idea was considered valid and he won many awards, including a […]

Shapes

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Notes from Janice’s Desk Over the years I’ve collected very valuable pieces of art work, including the one shown. If the work were in a frame with Picasso’s name on it  one might think it was during his basic shape period. But the art is even more valuable to me than any that Picasso might […]

Fermentation

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Notes from Janice’s Desk Wild purple grapes grow in our area. My family loves wild grape jelly. I often pick and cook the grapes, separate the juice, and then store the juice to use later.  If I plan to use the juice in a short time, I store it in the refrigerator. Even with the […]

Technology: Wikis

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Notes from Janice’s Desk I am absolutely WACKY over WIKIS. As to being a wizard, that is only in my dreams, but I am having fun and learning more every day. So what is a wiki? It’s a website that allows invited users to add new material and to edit material on the site. There […]

Saguaro Cactus

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Notes from Janice’s Desk One attraction in Arizona that I always visit are the saguaro cactus. These giant plants are found only in the Sonoran Desert of extreme southeastern California, southern Arizona and adjoining northwestern Mexico. In the Saguaro National Park near Tucson, there are so many cacti that it looks like a forest. But […]

Bonding

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Notes from Janice’s Desk A friend, Laura Sherman, teaches kids to play chess. I am adding a link at the bottom of this page to an article she wrote about how chess can bond families. The word bonding made me relate the types of bonding  between chemicals to emotional bonding between people. Some chemical bonds […]

Periodic Table: Hydrogen

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Notes from Janice’s Desk I wish kids learned about the periodic table in elementary school. It would make science so much easier for them. With this thought in mind, I am going to write a few lessons about the periodic table. First of all, the periodic table is a chart of the chemical elements arranged […]

Science Fair Projects: Physics

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Notes from Janice’s Desk Recently, a student asked if I would like to have the science fair project he had constructed while in my science class. I was shocked that he still had the project since he had been my student in 1974. While the project did not win outstanding awards given by the fair, […]

Technology

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Notes from Janice’s Desk I need to buy stock in “Snagit”—I finding this program so helpful. Have I figured out all it can do–of course not. I don’t know all the things that my word processor can do. I seem to learn what I need to know to do specific jobs, but I am going […]

Air Pressure

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Notes from Janice’s Desk This morning I noticed that a sealed gallon-size plastic water bottle was partially crushed. Further investigation revealed that the floor around the bottle was wet. It was obvious that the water had leaked out. But if the bottle has a hole in it, why didn’t all of the water leak out? […]