School's in session again!

My kudos to all who managed to continue on with their blogging during this past summer! The days flew by faster than I expected and now it is already the third week into school so I am making myself sit down and make this entry.
Each journey must start with a step, this is mine.

Bj is in 6th grade this year and we are studying NOEO Chemistry II. In our first class we covered gravity and did a couple of experiments. The one I think he had the most fun doing was the parachute one.

I gave him a white garbage bag, a ruler and a marker.
He measured out 12" squares and then cut them out with scissors.
The next part was the most fun. He drew pictures on each one to make it special.
He could draw anything he wanted to and chose to decorate one for each member of his family.

I reinforced each corner with tape, then we punched a small hole in each corner with an ice pick.
Next he measured out, and cut 16 - 20" strings from a spool of carpenters string.
After that he attached one string to each corner of the chute, brought the ends together and tied a small bag containing a rock to it.
Once all four were done he was then ready to toss and count!!
I created a short video file of his efforts:

The following week we studied atoms and molecules.
We had did experiments with diffusion.
This first one involved using hot and cold water.
He dropped one drop of food colouring into each glas and watched to see which glass the colour fill first.
As you can see the hot quickly diffused!
We then discussed the reason being the hotter water molecule were moving more quickly than the cold water molecules allowing the color molecules to diffuse at a faster rate.

Our next experiment dealt with diffusion through movement as well, but with the same temperature water, only this time he caused the movement by stirring one glass with a spoon.
As you can see the results were almost instantaneous!
Complete diffusion occurred within seconds.
Well now that I have started again I will try hard to keep this current!
I missed it and often found myself composing in my head as well on notepads, what I wanted to share.