Cartesian Divers & Dishcloths

6/12/22

‍    Promoting my summer classes: Xmas in July. This week I’m featuring a Fun Science project, Cartesian Divers and a much better photo of the holiday dishcloths.

‍    The divers work on a principle of pressure in a closed system. The system, of course consists a plastic bottle of water with plastic octopus-like toys that have a hole running from the top of their heads down to the bottom. You drop these toys into a bottle of water, and they will retain some air in bubble in the cavity of their bodies. Once the bottle is filled to the rim, forming a meniscus (water is a little taller than the bottle - more science stuff), the bottle is capped tightly. When the bottle is squeezed, the water pressure increases, compressing the air bubble in the divers, so they have less buoyancy and sink to the bottom. I tried for a while to actually take a photo of that happening, but I wasn't able to get any clearly in focus. Squeezing the bottle with one hand and trying to run the camera with the other hand, just didn't cut the mustard. So it seemed faster just to do a mock up. That was much clearer to illustrate the system. Those are the real divers that I was able to buy and I used an AdobeStock water bottle mockup. Yes, that's what the actual divers look like – I just wiggled their arms around to make them look like they were floating.

‍    I set up a display in the classroom at the Art Center yesterday, and I have real life examples of most of the things that I will be teaching. I had wanted to do it in the gallery portion so we could show off what classes we were teaching during the art fair at the end of this month, but, that wasn't allowed. I'm just hoping my little display stays mostly intact, as I am not going to the Art Center weekly any more because they closed to the public on the day that I had time in my schedule to volunteer. They opened up some hours on Sunday instead. Getting volunteers to staff the gallery has been a problem lately. After 14 years in the same time slot, I was very disappointed that they closed on Wednesday when they have a regular volunteer, rather than on a Tuesday when volunteers are scarce. Unfortunately, most times. we can't have the gallery open if there isn't a volunteer. Stop by the art center, or call 810-329-9576, if you'd like to volunteer.

‍    Take care and stay well. The sign up for summer classes just opened up this week. All the classes should be a lot of fun, with lots of learning going on, and neat things to take home. I'd be absolutely delighted to have you in one or more of my classes. Click here to be taken to the classes page. Please note that my classes that are mistakenly labeled as youth only are also for teens and adults. I'll try see if I can get someone to fix that.