spark

the mystery of the emerald elixir

Last night the water in this sunbutter jar, which had been left to soak in the sink, was discovered to be a dark bluish green. Dan asked if we had washed paintbrushes in the sink. We had been out for most of the day and no art supplies had been used at home, that I could think of. It didn't make any sense that soaking the jar would turn the water green, but determined to see if it would happen again, I emptied the water, filled the jar with fresh water, and added a squirt of soap, just as I had the night before. It's not as dark as yesterday, but the water is definitely greenish. 

These accidental discoveries are one of my favorite things.  I feel compelled to get to the bottom of the mystery.  Had the sunbutter (a spread similar in consistency to peanut butter, made from sunflower seeds) reacted to the dish soap? Was the soap a red herring, did immersion in water cause some kind of oxidation reaction? 

It turns out that sunbutter is known for its odd propensity to turn cookies green when it's used in a recipe.  The solution to this problem (if indeed you consider it to be a problem; I consider it to be awesome) is to add lemon juice and/or reduce the baking soda or baking powder in a recipe.  

Photo via waffles-n-trees. Some find green cookies disturbing. I find them awesome.

It turns out this nifty effect is due to the presence of chlorogenic acid (C₁₆H₁₈O₉) in sunflower seeds.  If you go back to your high school chemistry, you might remember that acidity and basicity are measured using the pH scale; solutions with a pH less than 7 are considered to be acidic, solutions with a pH greater than 7 are considered to be basic or alkaline, and solutions with a pH of exactly 7 are described as neutral.  My internet research reveals that when chlorogenic acid is added to an alkaline solution and the solution is exposed to air, the solution turns a bluish green color.  

Guess what's alkaline? Soap. And remember my acid-base reaction vs. oxidation hypotheses? Turns out it's really kindof both.

I shared my observations with Griffin, who had also noticed the blue-green water the previous day. Before hearing my hypotheses, he understood why I had attempted to replicate the previous day's conditions and suggested that the water today was less vividly green because there was less sunbutter residue inside the jar.  He also suggested testing my hypotheses with two jars - one containing only water and one containing soap and water.  I immediately felt like a fool.  With a dual hypothesis, why hadn't I attempted to test them both? I posed the one-jar problem to Griff: how can I run two tests when I only have one used-up jar of sunbutter? His solution: try with water first, then add soap if the color hasn't changed after a certain amount of time.  We agreed that one day was an appropriate amount of time, since an obvious change had occurred in both of my batches of water after 24 hours.  

Now we're itching to test out our evolving hypotheses, and have determined that we can run a more scientifically rigorous study if we purchase new sunbutter, place identical portions of sunbutter in multiple identically-sized jars filled with a specific amount of water, then subject each jar to slightly different conditions so that we can determine which factors contribute significantly to the color change. I was pleasantly surprised that Griff could come up with various study conditions on his own and demonstrated an understanding of hypotheses, hypothesis testing, and study controls.  The conditions we decided upon include:

1. sunbutter/water without lid
2. sunbutter/water/soap without lid
3. sunbutter/water with lid
4. sunbutter/water/soap without lid

I also shared the green cookie conundrum with Griff and told him about the effects of adding lemon juice or cutting down the baking soda.  He proposed two additional conditions:

5. sunbutter/water/soap 
6. sunbutter/water/soap/lemon juice

We could, of course, do each of those with and without a lid, too, yielding 8 total study conditions. What's more, we could also design conditions with and without the addition of another base, such as baking soda.  I think adding that level would bring us to 16 conditions, which feels overwhelming to me, so perhaps for the first round, we'll stop with lemon juice.

This is very exciting.  My favorite discoveries - and the ones that stick with me the most - are those I stumble upon like this.  Can you tell the sex of a butterfly from its chrysalis? How can you see a slug's internal organs without killing the slug? How do slugs breathe? What are nasal conchae shaped like? What are those funny moving bits of sticks on the bottom of a stream? How do ladybugs develop? What is that orange thing on a swallowtail caterpillar's head? The answers to all of these, the journeys that led to them, and more are in the science catergory of this blog.  Science is so cool.

advent-itious

I promised Angela that I'd show my advent calendar, and it's halfway through the month (I'm backdating, natch), but perhaps this will be on time for her 2011 calendar.  Ahem.

A year and a few weeks ago, my friend Lynn mentioned the envelope-style advent calendar that she was planning to make for her daughter, and it sounded like an excellent way to celebrate the month of December as well as get a little more organized.  I'm always planning to attend things like the Christmas parade or do things like jingle my neighbors and take a tacky lights drive, but December comes and goes and I miss dates or forget that I had intended to do things.  I also like the idea of an advent calendar with nifty things inside, but didn't want to do away with the nifty '70s felt tree from Dan's childhood, nor do I feel like we need any extra trinkets or candies.  So an activity a day? Perfect.  Then I managed not to do it.

But THIS year, ladies and gents, I was organized.  Super-organized.  5pm December 1st saw me frantically making a couple of last recycled-paper envelopes, stuffing them with ideas, and hanging them up for the kids to find. 

First, make 24 envelopes.  I used an envelope template, Elmer's glue, and pages torn from the many holiday catalogs that have been showing up at our door.  You might also use small envelopes from a craft store, decorated with the art supplies of your choice, or if you're really ambitious, try sewing a set. Number the envelopes before the next step.

(This also served as a good reminder to hit Catalog Choice again in the new year and stop those puppies from arriving in the first place. Reduce what you can, reuse what you can't reduce, and recycle the rest.)

Next you'll need a list of ideas and some way to put them in the envelopes.  You might write them on slips of paper.  I had created my list using Google docs, so I put my ideas in a table, printed the table, then cut out each block.  Remember to stuff date-sensitive items like parades or special visits in the envelope with the correct # for the date.  

Find a length of ribbon, twine, yarn, etc. and hang it wherever you want the envelopes to be and tie, glue, or clip the envelopes to it (I used miniature clothespins, found at a craft store).  I hung mine in numerical order.  It suddenly occurs to me that it might be fun to mix them up.  

I've seen many of them beautifully arranged along mantelpieces.  That wouldn't last five minutes in my house, so I strung my ribbon out of reach, in the entryway to our living room.

It's a hit with the 8-year-old; the younger kids aren't particularly interested this year.  Don't beat yourself up if you don't end up doing every activity, or don't do them on the days you planned.  We've had changes of course due to rain, cranky people, or lack of interest, among other reasons.  The idea is for this to be FUN.  If nobody thinks it's fun to go for a walk to see neighborhood lights tonight, that's ok.  If cookie baking needs to wait until tomorrow, wait!  We've set aside our "extra" activities for inspiration during winter break.

Need some ideas to reach 24?  Here are some of ours:

:: bake cookies :: deliver packages to neighbors :: get together with friends to make gingerbread houses :: take a tacky lights drive :: family holiday music dance party :: make wintery crafts :: cut paper snowflakes :: check out some holiday books at the library :: go to a holiday show :: shop for presents :: make gifts :: shop for and deliver food for the food bank :: hang out with cousins :: watch the parade of lights :: wrap presents :: go pick a tree :: make s'mores :: decorate the tree :: sit by the fire with cocoa :: 

word of the day 203/365: clever

Our house has been swamped by a wave of enuii.  Baleful eyes follow me wherever I go.  Children lurk at my elbow.  "Entertain us," their every fiber screams, "we're boooooored." 

Griffin approached me yesterday in the kitchen.  "I'm bored of all our books," he said.

"I wonder how you can solve that problem?" I replied.

"Maybe I could write my own comic book!" he exclaimed, but just as quickly, "but I don't want to, drawing comics is boring."

"You have some Captain Underpants comics that you had started drawing, maybe you could work on those," I suggested.

"I got tired of drawing all those dots on his cape.  It's hard to draw him over and over and over again because there's too many dots."

"Maybe you could redesign his cape to be more interesting to draw? Or..."

"I could make my own new superhero!"

"One you don't mind drawing over and over again!"

And with that, he dove into the studio.  When he emerged, he had created not one, but two new, easy-to-reproduce characters:

Domino Man and Mr. Checker

Love the details - the single dot for an eye, the mouth, Mr. Checker's ridged edge and spiraling eye.  I had to hunt down the domino responsible for inspiring Griff's work (the studio was littered with checkers and dominos, a evidence that creative genius had struck, for sure), and faced with this tiny gamepiece, I set out to create a 3D version of the boldly pipped super-hero:

I'm going to attempt to keep him around, although he keeps losing his eye - a typical hazard of superherodom, I'm sure. To stay abreast of his adventures, tune in to a flickr set near you!

word of the day 146/365: malaise

Maybe not representing today's word, but definitely a reaction to it.

tinkering

Griffin approached me at the end of the day on Sunday.

"Do you have anything I can take apart?" he asked.  

This question should probably strike terror into my heart.  I have, in the past, occasionally regretted teaching him to use such versatile tools as a screwdriver, hand saw, and eraser (both "magic" and regular varieties).  Sucker for dabbling that I am (and, ok, desperate to get the kids involved in something besides climbing up my butt), I send my mind on an attic raid, and recalled a portable stereo that hadn't been used in years.  The CD player skips hopelessly and one speaker grill has a hole in it, a souvenir of the summer when I was 19 and my 18 year-old brother and his friend helped me move into my junior year dorm room.  The friend threw a screwdriver at the stereo box, and of course the shaft went through the box, into the grill, stopping just shy of the actual speaker. Tool. Anyway, this thing is 15+ years old, wouldn't fetch much at a yard sale, and it's not worth fixing, so yeah, kid, you wanna take it apart? Ok. Basic safety lecture on not ever dismantling an appliance while it's plugged in, yada yada, GO.

The next thing I know, I hear scissors.  Yes, I can identify the sound of scissors cutting metal.  If you were me, you could, too.  So I inspect, and discover that since he and his brother had exhausted the possiblities for items that could be loosened or removed by hand (stereo wires, spring from CD player, battery compartment cover), and a mere screwdriver had proven ineffective for the further disassembly of the stereo, Griff had recalled that Dan's old CUTCO shears can slice through a penny, and decided to give them a go on the grill.  Worked like a charm.  Except that now there were various pieces of peeled-back, razor-sharp metal grill.  Whoa, Nelly.  On the other hand, total awesomeness, because now we had an unhindered view of the speaker, plenty of gritty bits on the speaker to bounce around with sound, and a perfect opportunity to learn about the equalizer. AWESOME.

Sound-wave experiment over (and shredded speaker removed, rendering the former stereo into a mono), fascination switched to the TOTAL AMAZINGNESS that is FM radio. Turns out that, given control over the dial, my children prefer '90s R&B, gospel, and NPR news, in that order.  I think we all learned something today.  Oh, and it kept them occupied for HOURS. Triple word score.

Next up: 13" pre-digital television dissection, anyone?

word of the day 122/365: moment

Day 2 of Dan's trivia championship.  I'm on my own with the kids until Tuesday; solo parenting of this duration doesn't happen very often and by Saturday morning I was a little afraid, but it turns out we're hitting the ground running.  So much so that I was actually out and about when the clock struck 15:00 UTC (11AM local time).  We had just arrived at Gallmeyer Farms' Berry Patch and I snapped this before we headed for the fields and filled our tummies with perfectly ripe, juicy strawberries, the first of the season. 

Curious why I overrode the hat and picked the word "moment" today, and what the deal is with 15:00 UTC?  Read about it on the New York Times Lens blog.  The photo above is my contribution to this worldwide project. 

(Update 5/8/10: mosaic not posted yet, see NYT Lens for details)

...and pick berries with them!

A little birdie told me that The Berry Patch will be open this weekend with plenty of yummy yummy strawberries!  Kneeling by a row of strawberry plants, staining your fingers as you pluck the fruit and fill your basket, is one of the supreme holinesses in the world.  Go forth! 

Farmer's markets are also starting up here in RVA and CSA deliveries, too.  I believe I'll be picking up my very first Edible Old Dominion veggies at SOTJ this weekend, and next Wednesday is the first Agriberry pickup.  It's springtime bliss.

9 things: pollination

9 things you can do with all that pollen out there*

1. find a big pollen-covered surface and make footprints, bike tracks, draw with a stick...

2. inspect it under a microscope. look at dried pollen and fresh pollen.  check out anthers and stamens.

3. watch it swirl in a puddle or stream

4. try to dye homemade play-doh with it (Griff's idea, how much pollen will it take?)

5. leave messages on people's car windows (think beyond "wash me" - an affirmation? something absurd? an absurd affirmation?)

6. sneeze...then learn about the anatomy & physiology of what just happened

7. create a stencil with leaves or another item - leave them on your car, patio, or sidewalk for a day or two, then lift to reveal your masterpiece

8. lure wildlife to a pollen-covered porch with birdseed or other bait overnight, then see what kinds of tracks you find in the morning

9. look for patterns on rocks and other surfaces, revealed by the dusting of yellow powder

*please only attempt these if you're not horribly allergic, ok?  except for #6; I have a feeling you've got part 1 of that one taken care of already.

nauplii!

Bio lesson of the day: the earliest crustacean larval form is a nauplius.  A slightly later form (at which many triops species hatch) is the metanauplius.

Latin lesson of the day: the plural of nauplius is nauplii.

Now say hello to my little friends:

The photos above are from around 11am today, when I discovered two little hatchlings twitching about in the water.  Only one is pictured above.  I wish I could provide a better look, but I'm working with seriously cropped 100mm macro photos of a 1mm creature.  You can barely see them in the water. 

Below are a couple of views of one triops larva around 5pm. There were three by this time, and I think they were very slightly larger and their bodies seemed a little better defined.  The image on the left shows some striations crossing over the photo - a thumbprint whorl pattern.  The entire square image is about 1/4 of the whole thumbprint - which gives you an idea of how miniscule the larvae are.

You can bet I'll be sharing more as these guys develop.  I hope more than 3 hatch, and/or that these three live to adulthood. 

word of the day 98/365: metamorphosis

I bought the kit pretty much exactly two years ago but didn't line up all my ducks until today.  Distilled water, check. Spring water, check. Desk lamp, check. Motivation to actually get this puppy rolling, check.  So here we've got a nutrient pack that looks like a tea bag but is labelled "DO NOT EAT" instead of bearing some pithy gurutastic platitude, soaking in what was distilled water until I poured it, basking in incandescent heat atop my piano. Hope you feel at home, little triops eggs in diapause. 

The concept of diapause is almost as cool as metamorphosis, and both occur in triops.  Awesomesauce.

Come out, come out, little nauplii!

In other metamorphic news, the swallowtail chrysalises that overwintered on our porch inside a bug habitat (sheltered from the damp but not from the cold - I figured that was better than their normal odds but still fairly natural conditions) have not eclosed.  I've been seeing adult swallowtails around town this week so it seems like they should be emerging.  It's entirely possible that they're dead.  Let's hope we have better luck with the triops.