Oobleck!

Science is awesome. I still remember the time that one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Fernandez (whom I called Mr. Buddy), introduced us to "oobleck," which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Mr. Buddy was quirky in the way that many science teachers are, and I assumed he had made up the word "oobleck" himself. (I just learned through wikipedia that the name actually comes from a Dr. Seuss book.) But anyway my point: Mr. Buddy and the simple hands-on experiments like "oobleck" that we would do in class really inspired/fueled my love of learning/science/nerd-dom.

Fast forward ten years to Zaqatala: my awesome sitemate Löki and I recently started a Science Club for school age kids. Each week we do fun experiments with the kids (think Bill Nye the Science Guy or Zoom), hoping to help promote creative & critical thinking. Science is kinda boring when you're just memorizing facts from a book. But when you get to see first hand the things that you are learning in school, well that's just awesome! (I really should find a synonym for the word awesome. Pardon my overuse.)

So today in Science Club we made oobleck. It's two parts starch to one part water. We used potato starch because that's what is most readily available in Azerbaijan. We put some into individual cups for each kid to poke around and play with, and then had a bigger plate of it so that everyone could see/touch it. The kids were really surprised by how weird the oobleck was and had a lot of fun playing it! As you can see, things got pretty messy. Luckily the water in the mixture evaporates off and just leaves the potato starch, which is fairly easy to remove from your hands and clothes.

All in all, it was a great time. Next week (inshallah) we'll have another cool experiment!