Mel Science Kit 1

So as the girls are getting older now we have decided to move on from the kitchen science and have signed up to a chemistry-based science kit to expand their sciences beyond the books and I can’t say we have been disappointed!

The kit itself is well laid out and easy to understand with the information to allow them to go into the science as much as they wanted to Emily just enjoyed doing the experiments whereas Jessica took the basic experiments and made her own not only doing the experiments the box was designed to do and the extra experiment they suggested but also coming up with her own after reading and watching the information available via the Mel science app.

The Tin Hedgehog experiment was great to watch this one came out really well especially considering we accidentally knocked it over and lost some of the liquid at the start of the experiment while attempting to put the lid on the container. it was very delicate so after the girls removed the liquid (before reading up further on the experiment) if fell apart and they were amazed by how soft it was. They also tried to see if it was magnetic but it wasn’t.

The Zinc was effected by the experiment as it went from shiny to the dull pellet shown in the picture above but this didn’t stop it working to make a new hedgehog again as Jessica started to think of new questions she started to experiment herself and by doing the experiment again reusing one of the used zinc pellets she discovered that the zinc could be used multiple times producing just as impressive hedgehogs. She also as she ran out of the ingredients watered down the solution and ran it again with both a used zinc nugget and a fresh one and found that being watered down slowed the process and changed what the created hedgehog looks like producing longer spikes and the used hedgehog was slower still producing fewer spikes than the new pellet did.

This experiment wasn’t as pretty as the hedgehog but worked a lot quicker although we had to stop for a while as when the Tin dendrite reached the from one electrode to the other it produced a thermal reaction creating the black “dust” in the bottom of the picture above and caused the battery pack to very mildly smoke, but a simple unplugging allowed everything to cool down again and she was soon back up and running the experiment again. again the metal produced was very soft and pliable.

Click here to find out more about MEL Science.