The kids solved the mystery I laid out for them this morning. The outline for the mystery in the curriculum binder involves a raccoon dumping trash and scattering it around before being scared off by gusty winds. I made it more involved by having the "raccoon" tear open one of those little lemon-shaped lemon juice bottles (I cut claw marks with my pocket knife), walk across some paper (leaving lemon juice tracks that could be revealed when subjected to heat), drag a bag of trail mix over to a table, and then try to wash some trail mix in a container of cabbage juice. The cabbage juice, which turns pink when mixed with any kind of acid, reacts to the lemon juice on the raccoon's paws. To make things authentic, I scattered trail mix all over the field and left some floating in the cabbage juice.
The kids thought it was pretty cool, but solved it relatively quickly. There were two teams working on it, divided along gender lines. The girls figured it out first.
Later, one of the boys got stung on the palm by a bee, so after removing the stinger, I took him over to our table and had him rub baking soda on the wound. This was a good way to illustrate a point I had made earlier in the week. Bee stings are acidic, and wasp stings are basic. This is why the folk remedy for bee stings is to rub baking soda (a base) on the wound. Vinegar (an acid) works for wasp stings. The baking soda helped neutralize the acid in the boy's wound. Applied science!

Next week is the last week of science camp for the summer. I'm teaching a camp called "Wild Wonders".

Cds I listened to while wondering where all the air in my front passenger side tire had gone: Nest "Woodsmoke", The Tiger Lillies "Farmyard Filth" and "Shockheaded Peter", Mary Timony "Mountains", and Mia Doi Todd "Come Out of Your Mine"