I have a badass little daughter. She loves science, math, singing songs from Matilda the musical, unicorns and all things rainbow. I’m fond of cooking and since cooking is also a science, we teamed up for her school fair project. I knew she had her eyes on the rain and clouds experiment so after some digging in our pantry we managed to turn a tin of spun sugar in to fluffy clouds and butterfly pea flowers tea in to pretty rain. We filled the glass with bright yellow lemonade, we topped the lemonade with a cloud of spun sugar and we poured the hot blue tea on to the sugar. We wanted to prove that as a cloud gets full of water or mass, the water has to go somewhere and will break through the cloud and start to fall to the ground. As we poured our hot tea over the spun sugar cloud, we watched the sugar/cloud disappear and change its composition; we were mesmerized by the blue tea slowly dripping like rain in the yellow lemonade and then turning in to a lovely and might I add, yummy rainbow. The cotton candy will melt and the lemonade will react with the tea and change color. The color of the butterfly pea flower tea changes depending on the pH of whatever it’s mixed with. That, dear ladies, is culinary science! If you add, as suggested by one of the parent at the fair, a generous shot of vodka, its’ also a mother’s helper.
Our cloud was not the only disappearing act. Last week our administration revealed the budget outline known as the skinny budget. The cuts in the proposed educational budget are fast and furious; among other debilitating cuts, they include eliminating support for after-school programs and teacher professional development. If science, and the dreams of your children are important to you, download this handy pocket-sized action guide and get to work on your next project. Your kids can help you writing postcards while sipping on rainbow tea(the non alcoholic one, that is). #RESIST
