Serious Science

This is Leah's first year of high school so the pressure is on. We really have to do science with experiments and everything this year. We have three experiments scheduled for this week and so far we have done two. Our current unit is Earth and the Lithosphere. Our first experiment was called,"How Sound Travels Through Different Substances". It involved attaching spoons to string and seeing how they sounded under different circumstances.

Leah with her new spoon earrings.



The second one was called, "A Simulation of Plastic Rock" Plastic rock is what scientists theorize is the layer of sometimes liquid/sometimes solid rock in between the earth's crust and the mantle. (called the asthenoshpere) So this experiment was a simulation of what the behavior of that layer looks like. The asthenosphere behaves like a very thick syrup, flowing around the mantle. But when it is subject to abrupt force the "syrup" hardens to form a solid. After the force passes the rock returns to it's syrupy state.

We used cornstarch to simulate this effect. Here is what we did:

1. Put one cup of cornstarch into a pie plate
2. Add 2/3 cup of water
3. Stir
4. Add 1/2 cup of corn starch to the mix.

As we stirred the mixture it solidified, making it hard to stir. When we stopped mixing it liquefied again. We picked up the mixture and squeezed it into a ball and then let it rest in our hands. It turned into a solid when we squeezed and a liquid when it rested in our hands.
So the conclusion is that plastic rock like the anthenosphere has similar properties.

Even if you care nothing about plastic rock we recommend that you try the recipe above. Just because it was really cool! We spent about thirty minutes just playing with it.

Corn starch gooey fun!