Super Cool Science!

Last Friday we did some SUPER COOL SCIENCE (literally AND figuratively!) with class mom and Evergreen State College professor Toska Olson and two of her students, Jasmine and Amanda. They brought in some dry ice and some liquid nitrogen for us to do some further experiments relating to states of matter. We explored some of the capabilities of dry ice, or frozen carbon dioxide, which has the interesting property of sublimation -- or changing directly from a solid to a gas without becoming a liquid. We froze bubbles, listened to the reverberations it made as it "melted" in bowls of different materials, and even made some ice cream with it! We also used liquid nitrogen, which boils at a temperature of -320 degrees Fahrenheit, to freeze objects such as oranges, rubber balls, bananas and flowers. We tested the rubber balls and found that the frozen one became too dense to bounce. We tried hammering in nails with frozen bananas and cucumbers, and we each got to freeze a flower and then crumble/crunch up it's frozen petals -- strangely satisfying! We also filled a balloon with nitrogen gas. We really love learning about states of matter -- science is super cool!