ingridscience

The surface of the moon is covered in moon regolith (moon dust), a few metre to tens of metres deep. image at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regolith#/media/File:Apollo_11_bootprint…
Earth regolith is formed by erosion - the wind and rain brush tiny particles from rock and erodes them.
Moon has no running water and no wind - how is the regolith formed? By the impacts of meteorites.

Simulate the formation of moon regolith by banging one rock (the surface of the moon) with another rock (a meteorite).
A fine dust is formed. Collect the dust in the tray with the white lining.

To look a property of the regolith, lay the plexi sheet over the tray of regolith, and rub a hand over it.
Students will find that the regolith jumps up to the plastic, and dances up and down, and they can spend a while experimenting. If they cannot get the dust to jump, try using a drier (non-sweaty) hand and rubbing faster (a piece of cloth may also help).
The regolith jumps because of electrostatic charges. Rubbing the plexi sheet gives it a charge, which attracts the tiny grains of regolith that are also charged.

Moon regolith is even finer (1/100 mm) than the dust made here, and also more charged (because it is bombarded by charged particles from space). When we land on the moon, the dust coats space suits, solar panels and camera lenses. (See image at http://www.space.com/18907-schmitt-covered-with-lunar-dirt.html
_GPN-2000-001124.jpg). Moon regolith is also sharp enough to wear away space suits and scratch visors. (Image of regolith magnified at https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/30/76830-004-38A20966.jpg)
Technology has overcome some of these challenges, for example electric fields are wired on camera lenses and surfaces to attract the moon dust to the side of the lenses.

To do the activity with a camping stove:
Push the straightened paper clip into the cork, to make a flame test tool.
Dip the wire in water, then in salt, then put it in the flame. The flame should be yellow.
Burn everything off the wire.
Dip the wire in water, then in copper sulphate if available, then put in the flame. The flame should be blue/green.
Potassium chloride, in large enough amounts of powder in the flame, burns purple.

To do the activity with a campfire:
Throw copper sulphate into the fire, to make green-blue flames.
Boric acid crystals make green flames.

The colours appear when electrons in the metals, excited by the heat, fall back to lower energy states and release light.
Fire can be different colours depending on what is burning.

Use a strip of paper to make a mobius strip: hold the strip flat, twist one end one half turn, then tape the ends together.
How many sides does it have?
Use a pencil to draw a line down the middle of the strip, and find out that the strip has just one side.

Make other mobius strips with different number of twists and find out how many sides they have.
Record the results to find the mathematical pattern: an even number of twists gives two sides, an odd number gives one.
(See attached worksheet).

Play around with cutting mobius strips down the middle to make new loops.
Play around with joining strips together, then cutting them both down the middle (see images).

We are going to make some butter to put on the bread that is baking, and we’ll look at the molecules in that process.

Butter is made from cream. Cream has many different molecules in it, including the three in your collection. Recognize any of them?
[Water, fat and phospholipid.]

We know that fat and water don’t like to mix. Show students a tube of water, then pour in oil, and watch them separate into layers.
At the molecular level, the long tails of the fat molecules (made up of carbon and hydrogen) don’t want to be near the water molecules. (It’s because one of them has a charge [water] and one does not [fat].)

But in cream the water and fat molecules are able to mix together. Drops of fat in the water are stabilized by phospholipid molecules.
The long tails of carbon and hydrogen like to touch the fat molecules. The head has lots of red oxygen molecules, and you might also see a purple phosphorus and a blue nitrogen in there - this end of the molecule can touch water molecules.

Arrange your fat molecules into drops. Surround them with water molecules. Then add the phospholipid molecules so that they make a barrier between the fat and the water molecules, oriented so that all the molecules are stable.

You have made an emulsion, which is what cream is. Drops of liquid fat suspended in water.
This is what is in the jar of cream sitting on your desk.

In a moment we will shake the jar of cream - the emulsion drops are shaken apart and the component molecules come together with molecules they like to be with [that look like themselves]. Do the same with your molecular model.

The fat molecules join together in one big group as butter. The water separates in another group as buttermilk.
The phospholipid molecules can be part of the buttermilk as their own group, or they can surround a couple of water droplets trapped within the fat molecules (butter does have some water in it).

Now you can shake your cream to break open the fat droplets and form two separate fat and water groups: butter and buttermilk. Keep shaking until you have these two separate entities in your jar - the solid butter fat and the white liquid buttermilk.

Set up the binoculars as in the first image, with once eyepiece poking through the cereal box.
Stand them on the tripod about 1m away from the board.
Adjust the angle of the binoculars so that the sun's image is projected on the board, then focus so that it is clear.
If you are lucky you will see dark spots on the face of the sun.
Check http://www.tesis.lebedev.ru/en/active_areas.html to find out what you should be looking for.

Sunspots are caused by strong magnetic fields that block heat coming from the inside of the sun, which allows the region above to cool (to 3700°C). They have a darker core, "umbra", surrounded by a lighter "penumbra" and are often larger than the Earth.

They move across the surface of the visible side of the sun as the sun rotates (about once every 2 weeks/month?).
By the time that area of the sun has come around again, the sunspot activity has changed.

Before cracking the egg, look at the shape of the egg, and show that as it rolls its shape makes it move in a circle. This means that eggs laid by birds do not roll off ledges.

Crack an egg at each table group.
Students draw the parts that they can see (maybe inside the outline of a shell, if the students are old enough to translate to the new shape).
Possibly use as an art project (see above water colour painting).

Students tell the class what they find, and together figure out/learn what the parts are for:
Yolk: Feeds the embryo. Protein, some fat, vitamins and minerals. (Iron, vit A, vit D, phosphorus, calcium, thiamine, and riboflavin.) Also lecithin, an effective emulsifier. Yellow like carrots.
Egg white: albumen, the Latin word for “white.” 40 different proteins. Layers of albumen protect the yolk and holds it in place. Also provides protein and nutrients for a growing embryo.
Chalazae: ropes of egg white. Hold the yolk in the center of the egg, so that the embryo can grow properly.
Eggshell: calcium carbonate. Air and moisture can pass through its pores. The shell also has a thin outermost coating called the bloom or cuticle that helps keep out bacteria and dust.
Membranes: between the eggshell and egg white. Defence against bacteria. Strong: made partly of keratin, a protein that’s also in human hair.
Air pocket: forms when the contents of the egg cool and contract after the egg is laid. (The small crater you see at the bottom of a hard-boiled egg is the imprint of the air cell.) Provide a pocket of oxygen for a growing chick.

More details on egg structure and function, as well as how these structures are nutritionally at https://www.saudereggs.com/blog/the-different-parts-of-an-egg/

Nicely detailed, but clear animation of a chick developing inside an egg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PedajVADLGw&t=12s

Indoors, sit the students in a circle around the chicken cage. Outdoors, allow students to interact with the chickens.
Cover topics as appropriate for the students' age.
Compare to humans often.

Discussion topics around chicken adaptations:
Chickens are birds - they have two legs and two wings. Chickens cannot fly but if startled will flap into the air briefly.
Chickens have excellent eyesight (birds have the best eyesight of all vertebrates). Although their eyes are on the side of their head, they can very accurately peck at food.
Their beaks are adapted for how they eat. Other birds have differently shaped beaks adapted to how they feed.
Chickens lay eggs for us to eat. The eggs she lays, are not fertilized as we don't have a rooster. (Human females also have eggs.)
Birds feathers keep in heat and enable flight.
All birds have light bones (often partially hollow) so that they are light.
Chickens are the living ancestors of dinosaurs.

Chicken behaviour activity for older students:
Ask students to design experiments to test what foods each chicken likes, which chicken has the best eyes, which chicken can jump the highest etc. Bring in some rigor on experiment design, and assessing variables.