Dim Sum Diaries
Lo-Gung is a chemist and would surely be ashamed of this...but since I am the homework go to person and more artistically inclined then he is, this task fell to me to accomplish...

3 year old son has a preschool science project that had to be completed (see earlier blog entry). Its due this week and since I have to use the laser printer at work, I was going to take half an hour to work on it very quickly. I bought some polished rocks and he was supposed to identify them. Translated, that means I am going to identify them and also put together the whole presentation. So I buy the poster board, even a nifty little sticker kit that has titles such as "Data", "Materials", "Hypothesis", etc etc etc. I didn't think it would be that hard to stick some rocks on a board and make it look all science-y. But my background betrays me...my last science experiment was back in the 4th grade. Mr Dixon, my teacher kept asking me what my experiment was. I told him it was a surprise. He apparently let me get away with that. On the day of my science fair, I had NOTHING. Quickly recalling a trick I had seen before, I quickly grabbed a glass jar, some matches, toothpicks and fork and a spoon. When I got to school, I laced the fork and spoon together putting the circle thingy in the tines, making a arc-y thing (don't you love my technical terms). you stick it in a toothpick, stick it on top of the glass so that this utensil arc is balancing from the glass by only the toothpick...then you burn half of the other toothpick off...and TA DAH!!!! it is still balanced!!!!

SCIENCE!!!!

"This demonstrates the principles of balance and gravity," I kept telling everyone who would listen. Of course everyone was duly impressed by my toothpick-fork-spoon balancing abilities. I don't remember what grade I received for that one though.

So anyways, fast forward to 2004. I have all the materials...but basically all I intended to do was identify the rocks based on the handy rock guide that came with the rocks. Its pretty mainstream, like hematite and amethysts. But when it came to the actual execution of putting together the project, I panicked. What would be a good title? Rocks Are Our Friends: An Informative Guide To Rocks and Fossils. I pretty much threw out all principles of experimentation that I learned in high school. It has the materials section (rocks, microscope, blown up to 72 font to take up space). The conclusion: "To study rocks is to study a part of our earth and to dig a little deeper about ourselves. For more info, visit the following websites." The clipart volcano I used printed out black and white and looks like an exploding zit.

It gets even better, but I'm busy at work...I'll blog more later about it.