The nylabone did little to mollify Miles, although he forgave us about 10 minutes later...
My birthday rolled around a couple of days later, and we had a wonderful family dinner and celebratory brownie...
Ben built this fantastic Lego creation with tons of help from Gail one morning while we were waiting for it to warm up enough to go outside...
It eventually got up to about 5 below zero, and we headed out with Miles for a nice long walk along McMaster Road...it was so clear and bright out that the shadows seemed darker, as this picture shows...
It was a great day for a walk, although the wind made a big difference, when it picked up and blew in our faces every once in a while...
He was cold at the outset, but once we got going, Ben had a great time in the snow and cold and crisp air...
Miles loved walking and sniffing the Lake Clear roads...he's still so thin that he gets pretty cold...don't tell the other dogs, but we got him a fleece jacket for the below zero days (pics to come soon)...
Ben has a unique smile these days, with teeth coming and going at a furious pace...but he had a fun time...
Miles asked for a fisheye-esque portrait, and here it is...his nose isn't really that big, nor does it actually bend to the right...
Last night, Ben and I tried our hand at the first of many experiments out of a book I got from Amazon (thanks to a gift certificate from D for my birthday)..."Mad Science: experiments you can do at home - but probably shouldn't"...
This one involved filing the edges off of a post-1982 penny, which is made almost entirely of zinc, with only a thin outer coating of copper...filing off the edges allows the zinc interior to be dissolved by the hydrochloric acid...
Yes, hydrochloric acid, that eats the core out of the penny (or in this case 4 pennies...one was so cool, that we figure 4 would be that much cooler, and in a rare case of awesomeness, it was!)...in the pic above, you can see the acid eating away the zinc core, while leaving the copper faces of the pennies intact...lots of bubbles and hissing and even a bit of stinky smoke...we did the experiment on the stovetop, so when the smoke started, we just ran the fan for a bit...
Ben watched the pennies, and Miles watched Ben...although we had protective gloves and eyewear for Ben and I, Miles had to just keep his distance...
At the end of the experiment, we were left with two perfect (and very clean) penny faces...I hadn't seen one of these new design pennies before last night...
This last picture is Ben holding the "heads" side of the cored out penny with the inside facing the camera, if you look closely you can see the date and wording in reverse because you are looking at the inside of a penny...
Future experiments in our plans include the eternal preservation of a snowflake using cyanoacrylate glue and microscope slides and covers, and forging various metals using a thermite reaction (we'll wait for warm weather and the outdoors for that one)
No comments:
Post a Comment