Skip to main content

Kids Projects at Home

Simple Kids Crafts is a video blog dedicated to reviving the old art of handicrafts for people of all ages. How do oil spills affect aquatic plants? A Miniature Solar Panel Fire Water Balloon Make Clouds in a Bottle Secret Messages Make a Rocket Make a Hovercraft Make an Anemometer Make a Sundial Make a Radio Make an Electroscope Make a Stethoscope Make a Telescope Make a Periscope Make a Camera Bending a stream of water with a comb Lighting a bulb without electricity Simple Motor Cotton Ball Rocks? Salt-Absorbing Art and Science Color Changing Glue Art Baking Soda Clay Oil Sun Catcher Grow a Pineapple Plant! Bead Bowls Wow, what an Air-Gun Funny Diver ! Water boils without fire Ice with Boiling Water Water that boils instantly Water boils in a Paper Pot Soap-driven Boat Pulse Moves Pin Pretty Garden—without Plants Picture made by Fire Magic Pictures Dancing Doll Smoke Goes Down The Dancing Coupl The Umbrella Dance Magic Butterfly Colorful

Seeing Through the Haze

Objectives/Goals 

My objective was to find out how light of different wavelengths penetrates smoke. The hypotheses that I tested were that light penetration through smoke is independent of the a) type and b) amount of smoke it passes through. 

Methods/Materials 

Two different types of smoke were obtained by burning canola oil and juniper needles.

A beam of white light was passed through the sample of smoke, and the amount of light at different wavelengths transmitted through the smoke was measured with a homemade spectrometer.

 An attempt was made to control the amount of smoke (high, medium or low density) per sample. 

Results 

The two different types of smoke did not have the same pattern of light transmission. At high densities (Approx. 20% light transmitted) canola oil smoke allowed more light of blue wavelengths to pass through. 

However at lower densities transmission of reds was equal to blue and yellow and green were less favorable. At high densities, juniper needle smoke had the same pattern as the canola oil sample.

At the lowest density of juniper needle smoke red wavelengths were transmitted more than blue reversing the high density trend. 

Conclusions/Discussion

 I found that light penetration through smoke is dependent on the type and amount of smoke.

The density dependence is surprising to me, maybe smoke particles interact when they are at high densities producing a different pattern. 

I will collect more data on smoke from different materials found in forest fires. This information can be used to help develop climate studies that model absorption of carbon dioxide by plants. 

Forest fires are predicted to increase as global climate change progresses. Plants that are starved of certain wavelengths due to the smoke created from forest fires could display stunted growth and lower uptake of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Make a Rocket

Rockets are fascinating!  They soar into the sky and help us know many secrets. Are you fascinated by rockets? If your answer is yes, you would be interested in this activity. The rockets that you can make safely will not go very far, perhaps much less then the rockets we enjoy on the Deepawali day. But then you will agree, the fun and excitement to make your own rocket has a totally different dimension.  The basic principle of rocketry is Newton's Third Law of Motion, that is, "For every action there is an equal an opposite reaction".  A big rocket uses chemicals to release an intense stream of gas out its tail end that propels it upwards.  A fuel is used in a rocket to produce this gas through some chemical reaction. The rocket fuel is sometimes liquid, and sometimes solid.  But, in all cases, a gas is ejected from the tail of the rocket. The first kind of rocket that we can make is propelled by a very safe gas - carbon dioxide.  The fuel it uses is

Make a Periscope

Are you familiar with the word "submarine"? A submarine is a kind of boat that moves underwater. Submarines are common crafts for the Naval forces of any country. But, while moving underwater, submarines need to know where they are with respect to other objects on the surface of water. The device they use to do this is called a periscope.  Periscopes are optical instruments that can afford submariners a limited though vital visual picture outside their windowless hull. Traditionally, periscopes offered the submerged submarine its only glimpse of the outside world. Classic English war movies have also made them the submarine's most familiar feature.  For most of us, who are unlikely to come across submarines in real life, a periscope can make it possible to see round corners and over the heads of crowds during processions or at sporting occasions. In a periscope, two mirrors are arranged at 45 degrees to each other. One mirror captures the rays of light from t

Chemistry Investigatory Projects for Class 12 CBSE

Below is the List of Awesome Chemistry Projects for your Science Fair and Exhibition Analysis of Honey The Metronome of a Chemical Reaction The Magic of Metal Corrosion Agent Sodium Chloride Strikes Again Steel and Acid Rain How to Increase the Speed of a Reaction Boiling Point Fire Burning Wet Heat Desalinate Sea Water How does caffeine influence soybean plant growth? Cotton Ball Rocks? Salt-Absorbing Art and Science Color Changing Glue Art Baking Soda Clay Oil Sun Catcher