My Home Among The Hills

I am sitting here at Panera (yes…again…I know, I should go to work some) looking out at the dark rain clouds rolling in and wishing that we would get a bunch more days of nice weather.  I have always loved Summer.  I sort of dread the coming of Winter and Fall.

I was thinking about some of  the things that I love about Summer and water rockets came to mind.  I think it sort of mixes water, heat, adventure, a little danger and an explosion of sorts.  How can I not love it?!

When we lived in TN, we decided to make a water rocket to keep us all cool and give the kids something to chase.  You see, a water rocket shoots water all over the place and anyone nearby gets soaked.  It also launches pretty high up in the air and someone has to go and recover the fuselage.

So, what is a water rocket you ask?  Simple…it’s a 2 liter bottle with 3 inches of water in it.  Add some compressed air and off she goes!  I glued some pvc pipes together in an “L” shape and added a bicycle valve and stem to the back (drill a hold in a pvc cap and insert the stem…seal with silicone).  All you do is put 2-4 inches of water into a 2 liter bottle and carefully hold it upside down on the open end of the pvc pipe.  Add compressed air via the tire valve at the other end and you’re in business.  As the air builds, the water starts to leak signalling that it’s time to let go!

By not making too tight of a fit between the bottle and the pvc (some people suggest a tight fit but that’s more dangerous), you run very little risk of having anything explode.  I added some duct tape to the tip of the pipe to make is a snug (but by no means tight) fit between the pipe and the bottle.  Air will leak before pressure will build up too high.

Of course, the bottle flying off the end of the pipe could be dangerous so make sure it points upward and not at anyone/thing.  Other than that, a water rocket is an absolute blast and something kids and adults will enjoy.  As Winter sets in, consider the design of your water rocket for next Summer.  It will be worth the wait!

We recycle and reuse about everything we can.  It’s amazing how much packaging gets put around the stuff we buy.  Many packages are feats in engineering…I mean, has anyone ever been able to get all the stuff back into the original box from where it came?  I thought not.  The shape and structure of many packages are pretty amazing.People think a lot about how to maximize strength with minimal material and how to fit more stuff in a smaller space in the refrigerator…amazing!  

Anyhow, lots of the things in my recycle bin can be reused for other stuff.  I am almost certain I stole this idea from somewhere, though I can’t remember where.  More importantly though, I found a way to draw attention to the lowly nipple fruit.  This bank looks a lot like the nipple fruit – a non-edible fruit apparently in the eggplant family.  I’d sort of like to grow some of these, just to say I have done it, but I don’t know what I would do with the fruit…I suppose it would just get me in trouble.

So, I found 4 old pop bottles we had left over from watching the Super Bowl .  I cut the tops off, right at the top of the label.  I had to monkey around a little bit, but 4 of those tops can be crammed together and super-glued in place to make a nipple-fruit-like bank (though watch out, super glue will haze plastic).   Take any lid off and drop coins in (or pull coins out) and you’re in business.  It won’t take all sizes of coins, but it you want, you can use 3 liter bottles for bigger sizes!  Abigail also suggested putting some rice in it so it could be used as a rattle/rhythm maker!

Now here’s the funny part…it is really hard to type with a nipple fruit bank stuck to your hand.  I got it stuck to my hand as I was trying to pry it off of the work bench…er…dining room table where it was stuck before I got it on my hand.  I think there must be a better way of hooking all of this together…

Anyhow, this thing looks pretty cool and is recycling you can really take to the bank!

In other news, I wrote a little program to change the header image of the blog every 15 minutes.  I took each of the pictures you’ll see somewhere in WV.  You may have to refresh your browser to see the update.  Is it cool or distracting?

Like many refrigerators I have seen, ours is an exercise in chaos.  Both kids pretty much get the alphabet now but we’ve retained the magnet letters for some reason.  We occasionally form up some clever words but there is a limit to what can be spelled out.  In addition to the letters, the refrigerator serves as our command center of sorts.  All things kid-related are stuck to the front door, held in place by magnets that are one sheet of paper from being over-taxed.  Mo, one of our cats, seems to always push the envelope of magnetic tolerance and periodically clears the lower reaches.

I came across this post and it seemed like the perfect change…the fridge was just crying out for a change.  I junked a bunch of stuff and threw this marble run together pretty quickly.  Hot glue + magnets + plumbing odds and ends = fun!  Abigail and I messed with it quite awhile after supper until bed time.  I am sure that we’ll mess with it more this evening.

She was pretty quick to get the point of how the marble we were using knocked down through the system.  Unfortunately, she also had to see the underside of our oven and refrigerator as we tried to recover renegade marbles that understood physics better than we did!

Mo our cat was, of course, terribly interested in the entire bit of fun. He kept standing under the outlet and got thumped a few times watching the marble come down!

My wife accused me of trying to be Jack Black with the title of this post. Although I do look pretty fantastic in wrestling tights, I don’t have his kung fu or guitar skills. Instead, I have to rely on my skills with a hot glue gun. This week I have posted about all sorts of domestic stuff so it’s about time for a little manly mayhem!

The kids and I made a catapult last night. I recently finished out a bottle of medicine and hated to see the bottle just go into the recycle bin.  The bottle is just too pretty… I mean, the color  instills fear in the recipient of the catapult’s action! Anyhow, with a few minutes, a couple of pieces of scrap wood and a hot glue gun, we made a catapult which we used to launch Jolly Ranchers into Isaac’s mouth.

 

We had to mess with the angle of the base to get better distance, but Isaac was willing to dive for a few until we figured it out.  We found that by lifting the back of the base, we could launch a Jolly Rancher quite a distance. As part of the fun, we learned some about the physics of catapults and also the history of seige warfare.  Isaac knew that the spring stored energy when flexed.  We talked about momentum and kinetic/potential energy.  It was a pretty quick project and I think we all learned a little too.  I think we may try a trebuchet this summer.  We have a compost pile ripe for attack!


I think we’ll revisit this project in a few years and do a little experimentation.  I would like for us to experiment with the length of the catapult arm, the angle of the base, the tension of the spring and the distance the arm can travel.  I think we are a little young for too many calculations, but we may try this outside this summer with a bigger setup that we can really play with!