We are currently in Week 5 of our Virtual Science Clubs! So far, our young scientists have learned about the Earth’s rotation and revolution, biomes, habitats and adaptations, and recycling. Our mentors have led them in activities such as creating models of Earth’s movement, growing grass, constructing miniature habitats, and crafting using all recycled materials. The Planet Earth curriculum continues to engage the girls as they are able to easily relate what they are learning in clubs to the world around them!
To learn more about each week’s activities, be sure to check out our #WeekInReview videos! Each week, one of our Junior Mentors produces a short recap about what the girls are learning and demonstrates the project or experiment that everyone completed.
In addition to Spring Clubs, SCFGLive, our live science show starring Hannah, Nimisha, and Dr. Marbles has been exploding with experiments! The second season began with talking all about animals, from reptiles to amphibians all the way to the North Pole with polar bears! In our very first experiment, we created colorful hard-boiled eggs, one with a shell to replicate reptiles and one without a shell to represent amphibian’s slimy skin. We tested out to see which egg, our reptile or amphibian, absorbed the food-coloring, and our young scientists at home, concluded that different animals have different skin-types, or adaptations, to help them survive in their environments.
Speaking of certain environments, we even visited the polar bears in the cold arctic and created our very own blubber, with vegetable shortening, and stuck our blubber layer in a bowl of ice-cold water and it was a miracle that Hannah and Nimisha’s hands stayed toasty warm in the cold water! We discovered that this miracle was something polar bears lived with every day--their blubber allowed them to have a layer of fat that kept them warm in their cold home.
After learning about adaptations, SCFGLive got an extra special guest, one of our SCFG Junior Mentors, Tamar, who taught us all about density. Tamar showed our young scientists
that different liquids, such as syrup, oil, and water, have different densities because of the way their molecules are structured. We asked Tamar why these molecules were different and she told us that every object falls under a state of matter--solid, liquid, or gas--and these states of matter determined the structure of the molecules. Furthermore, our special guests didn’t stop with Tamar because we had a super cool chemist, Rita from Bristol Myers Squibb, teach us about mixtures and solutions! Rita helped us make a delicious snack mixture with chex-mix, pretzels, and chocolate chips and Dr. Marbles made a really great prediction that he would be able to pick out his favorite snack--pretzels--out of our mixture, and Dr. Marbles was right! Rita told Dr. Marbles he could pick out the pretzels he wanted because the molecules of the mixture are able to be separated unlike in a solution.
Rita also showed us how to make a yummy solution with Kool-Aid mix, sugar, and water. We poured the sugar and Kool-Aid in the water and noticed it sunk to the bottom. But, after mixing the Kool-Aid and sugar everything dissolved and we weren’t able to take out anything in the solution! That’s because the molecules of the solution cannot be separated. Season two has had so many great experiments, and we’re so excited to continue learning so much more about science!
There are so many inspiring things going on at Science Club for Girls! Click here to read our full March 2021 e-newsletter.
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