Explore Outdoors~ Frozen

 In 15 days, spring will be here! I can't wait. It's been a cold winter, which makes it feel longer than normal. Even when the sun shines and melts snow off the roof, it freezes overnight! 

What does the world look like outside your door this week?

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Ice Needles

 

It pays to look at the ground when you're walking. You might find a shiny coin, or - as in this case - some interesting crystals. One icy day in mid-December I was walking through the woods here in upstate NY and I saw thick, icy crystals pushing up through the moss-covered soil. I was taken by the way they curled, and their seeming fragility - though they'd have to be pretty strong to push through the moss!

Turns out they are ice needles, or "needle ice" -  something that naturally occurs when soil temperatures stay above freezing while air temperatures fall below 32 degrees F. Each needle is thin, but they stick together when they get into the frigid air.

What interesting things have you noticed this week?

Explore Outdoors ~ Frost Flowers

 

Out for a walk in the woods last month, we discovered these needle-sharp, spiky frost flowers decorating the thin ice of puddles. These frost flowers have nothing to do with plants. Instead, they are ice crystals that grow on tops of newly formed ice on ponds and lakes - and even on the Arctic Ocean. It has to do with how warm the air is compared to the water, and the granules of ice trapped on the puddle surface. Those nubby granules form perfect spots for nucleation and growth of these porcupine-like "frost flowers."

What's happening to puddles and ice in your backyard?

Explore Outdoors ~ Lichen Looking

 There is a large rock that sticks out of my yard. In the summer it’s an obstacle to mow around, a background for calendula flowers. In the winter, you can walk right by it – unless you happen to be looking at squirrel tracks. Which I was the other week. That’s when I noticed the lovely lichens, framed by snow and ice.

 

Lichens in these parts are adapted to survive the cold. Some go dormant when it’s cold and dry, others have antifreeze in their tissues.

This week, do some Winter Lichen Looking.

• Where do you find your lichens growing? On tree trunks? On branches? On rocks?
• What kind of lichens do you see? Are they leafy? Crusty? Branchy?
• What colors are your lichens?
• Are they loners, or do they share their space with other kinds of lichen?
• Draw pictures of your lichens, or take photos, and share them with other lichen lookers.

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Ice Crystals

Part of my favorite walking road is shaded by a hill. It was so cold last week that, during the middle of the day, ice crystals formed on blades of grass and the midribs and edges of leaves littering the ground. 

This week pay attention to the small bits of beauty 

that make up your world.

Explore Outdoors ~ Letting Go of Winter

 

 

We're definitely tipping toward spring. I can feel the days lengthen, and new birds show up at the feeder. But there are days when, regardless of how bright the sun is, the air is still cold enough to freeze water dripping off the roof and onto stems below.

What do you see that indicates winter is on the wane?

Wednesday Explorers Club ~ ice

This is the season of snow and ice

when footsteps squeak

and words freeze in bubbles above your head.

Smarter beasts have found a den

cozy and warm

and are fast asleep!

Wednesday Explorers ~ Icy sounds

It's been cold the past couple weeks, with ice forming in road ruts, coating gravel, or sometimes falling like glitter from the sky.

Last year around this time NPR produced a fun piece on how ice sounds like Star War blasters. Have fun! And spend some time listening to ice wherever you happen to be this winter.

Extreme Planet

Extreme Planet
by Carsten Peter & Glen Phelan
112 pages; ages 8-12
National Geographic Kids, 2015

If you're looking for adventure, this book opens up lots of possibilities. Tucked within the covers are photographs of some of the wildest places Carsten Peter has visited: volcanoes, caves, glaciers, and canyons.

But since it's winter, let's explore chapter 2: Glaciers and Ice Sheets. Greenland is cold and icy - a huge ice sheet one-to-two miles thick covers most of the island. This sheet was built up over thousands of years, with snow falling on top of older layers and compressing them into layers of ice. This ice pushes outward from its thickest region, says Carsten, like cake batter spreading out as you pour it in a pan. But a lot slower.

Each chapter includes current topics and science activities. In this chapter, Carsten addresses the issue of climate change and provides tips on things you can do to reduce global warming. He also includes a hands-on activity challenging readers to find fabrics that could keep them the warmest in an Arctic expedition.

Carsten writes - and explores - far away places. But, he says, there's a lot to explore right in your own community. Visit a nature center and learn about the plants and animals that live there. Learn what it was like before people settled in the area. Or settle down in your back yard and watch the wildlife that visit your part of the planet.

Today is STEM Friday. Drop by the STEM Friday blog for book reviews and other STEM resources.

Wordless Wendesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Ice Watching

We get a lot of ice here in upstate New York... different kinds of ice, depending on the season. Early on, when the cold is a novelty, we like to crunch through the thin frozen ice skins covering puddles. Later, we like to look at things caught in the ice; frozen just beneath the surface.

According to Ellen Obed, there are Twelve Kinds of Ice, each with its own season. Why not spend a few days this winter checking out the kinds of ice you have in your backyard? Is it thick or thin? Is it smooth or bumpy? How many kinds of ice do you have over a winter?

Does your ice sing?

Try tapping on ice with your fingers, a stick, or a spoon. What do you hear? Does thick ice sound different than thin ice? How else can you use ice to make music? Check out how these Siberian drummers make music with the ice on Lake Baikal. The lake is thousands of feet deep, but this section - with the musical ice - is rather shallow... about 5 feet deep.

http://youtu.be/en0p1Y35p3w

Getting Traction on a Slippery Surface
If you have a battery-powered toy car, try running it across your icy patch. What sorts of things might you use to help its tires get a grip? Instead of tossing salt on the ice, try some natural things to see if they might help. For example: sand, ashes, tree bark mulch, clean kitty litter, grated beets. Check back during the day to see if any of these things help melt the ice.

The power of Freezing
If you've ever left a plastic bucket of water outside during the winter, you already know that the expansion of freezing water can leave a crack down the side of your bucket. That force of freezing water is one thing that helps break rocks apart. I wonder if it might be used to split those huge logs sitting by my woodpile?

Check out other science resources and book reviews at the STEM Friday blog.

Wordless Wednesday

No Icicles? Make your Own

Nothing says "winter" like icicles. Those are the frozen spikes that form when dripping water freezes.

If you don't have icicles (yet), and it's cold outside, you can make your own. All you need are:
some coffee cans (or #10 cans)
string
hammer and nail
thumbtack
food coloring

First you need to make something that holds water, but leaks: a can. Start by using the nail to punch three holes around the top rim of each can - evenly spaced. Tie a string through each hole and bring the ends together and tie them in a loop. That's so you can hang your icicle-makers from a tree branch away from sidewalks and driveways.

Then, use the thumbtack to make a hole in the bottom of each can. Make one hole as tiny as possible, and the others of various sizes. On a cold night, cold enough to freeze the water, take your cans outside and fill them half full with water. Add food coloring for tinted icicles. Then hang each icicle-making can on a branch and let it go to work.

In the morning, check on your icicles. Did the size of the hole in the bottom of the can make any difference in the size of your icicles? What happens to them during the day?

One thing you might notice about your icicles is that they all have a "carrot" shape. There's a reason for that, say scientists.As water drips onto an icicle and freezes, it releases heat. The warm air rises up the sides of the icicle and acts like a blanket, or insulator. The insulation is very thin at the tip, and thick at the top. So that's why the tip grows thin and rapidly, and the top grows slowly. Find out more about the math behind icicles here.

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Slippy Slidy Ice

Ice is slippery because of the way the ice crystals on the surface behave. Tiny ice particles (molecules) on the surface move back and forth very fast. This constant vibration makes the top layer of ice crystals act like a thin liquid, reducing friction between an object and the ice. Great for hockey pucks. Not so good for people walking on a sidewalk.

The colder it gets, the stickier ice gets. That means there’s more friction between an object and the surface of the ice. But the highway departments in our area don’t wait for the temperature to drop. Snowplows head out at all hours of the night spreading a mixture of sand and salt to increase friction – and help melt the ice on roads.

Up on our hill we spread wood ashes on the road. Not only do they give traction, but if it’s a sunny day the areas covered by the dark ashes melt faster than the ice without ashes. We sprinkle sand or kitty litter on the steps to our house.

What can you use to increase the friction – lower the slipperiness – of ice on your driveway?

First you need an ice patch to experiment with. Then try sprinkling different things across the surface to help your feet get a better grip. If you have some old beets from the garden, try beet juice – some communities are using beet juice instead of salt to help melt ice.

You also need a way to test slipperiness. Find something that slides across ice well, such as a hockey puck or flat-bottomed microwave container filled with dry beans. Now figure out how you can launch it across a patch of ice so that each test is the same. You might create a short ramp and let your puck slide down the ramp and onto the ice. Or you might devise a slingshot that launches the puck across the ice (make sure you pull it back to the same launch line each time). You also need a way to mark where the puck stops.

Test your experimental design a few times with nothing on the ice, and then sprinkle your “slip-stopper” on the ice and see how far your puck slides.