Oobleck

Dr. Seuss wrote a book titled "Bartholomew and the Oobleck."  A book I've never even read :)  For some reason, though, Dan used that as his inspiration for the "finale" of his science class at co-op.  The class before, Dan introduced the oobleck concept and talked about Newtonian and Non-Newtonian fluids.  (I'm sure you can google that). The kids split up into teams and made a small amount of oobleck with water and cornstarch.  The cool thing about oobleck is that you can slip your fingers into it and pick it up and let it run between your fingers but the moment you press hard, or even punch it, it resists.  

But...making oobleck in small bread pan containers is not BIG enough for Dan the Science Man.  No!  The finale needed to be bigger, go farther, make a bigger mess, and he knew exactly where he was going with this science experiment.  Enter a kiddie pool, buckets of water, and LOTS of cornstarch.  What resulted was a Non-Newtonian fluid that not only was one big mess, but a pool of oobleck that could be walked, hopped, and jumped upon.  As always, the kids had a ball!!  It was a huge success.  

We took video but unfortunately I am having trouble getting it to upload to the blog.  You can enjoy the pictures of the day!  It will give you a small taste of what kind of fun we had.  

A look at the mixing of the oobleck.  Lots of hands and lots of mess.  It was also Picture Day (bad idea to have both on the same day!) and the older girls were trying to keep the oobleck from coming into contact with their hair :) 

Aly running on the oobleck.  You can see that her feet are not sinking.  The quickness and the pressure keep her on top of it.

 Skyeler's turn!  The kids lined up and took turns running, jumping, hopping, and sometimes standing still so they could sink and get "stuck."

 They took a break from running across it to play in it again.  Not long afterwards, it got messy.  Despite the girls trying to keep their hair oobleck free, the urge to throw oobleck at each other was too great.  Oobleck fights ensued and the church parking lot looked like a very large flock of birds had dropped some do-do there LOL!

Dan and Aly jumping!

All the little ones jumping at the same time!

All the big girls jumping at the same time.  It's amazing the kiddie pool held up!  You can see a bit of the mess it made all around the pool in this picture.