Month: March 2014

Science Fair judges can be pretty weird.  If you could get into their head and figure out how they think, you'd have the upper hand in the contest - right?  Well since we can't get into their heads (eek, scary), Reeko will do the next best thing.  Here are some Science Fair secrets that will help you get a leg up on the competition. How to win First, make sure you choose a topic that you find interesting. Once you have picked a topic, do a lot of research on it. Learn everything you can about your topic.  This is probably the most important step of all.  Become an expert on your subject because that's really what science fairs are all about - to teach students

Scientists with too much time on their hands have just finished a study that found peeing in the pool, which contains chlorinated water, is creating a deadly combination of chemicals. The chemical that results is trichloramine and cyanogen chloride which scientists know causes lung problems and can hurt your heart and nervous system. In fact, cyanogen chloride is known to the military as “CK” and is considered a chemical warfare weapon. So yeah, your pee in the pool is mixing with the chlorine and making a chemical weapon – how cool is that!!! The scientists said that they were not as worried about the dangerous pee in the pool as they were worried about kids drinking a bunch of soft drinks and trying to start a

And if the experiment doesn't work OK, so it happens. But we are prepared! Scientific experimentation is not an exact science (see what Reeko did here - it’s called a “pun”). That's what experimentation is all about. But, since we've been asked this question on more than one occasion, here's the standard answer. Follow these 5 simple steps if one of the experiments on our site does not work. Carefully repeat the experiment again Carefully repeat the experiment again Carefully repeat the experiment again Email Reeko with your question/problem with the experiment Carefully repeat the experiment again Following these 5 steps will almost always guarantee success. And, you also get a more precise feel for how a real scientist conducts experimentation. [iframe src="http://www.reekoscience2.com/EquationSolve.aspx?puzz=16" height="180"] Not sure what's going on here? Check out the

X-Rays are really quite amazing when you really think about it.  I mean, come on guys, it lets you see right through things!  Image how much fun it would be to have x-ray vision.  When dad left for work you could snicker about his polka-dotted boxer underwear.  At Wal-Mart you could look at closed-up stuff without having to sneak the box open.  Heck, when the kids played 'guess what I'm holding behind my back' you'd win every time! X-Rays are really very similar to light rays except X-Rays can pass through objects that light cannot.  Seems like magic - doesn't it.  Wilhelm C. Roentgen, the mad scientist that discovered x-rays in 1895, was a little stunned too when he first stumbled across the phenomena.  He was

Here are a few tidbits about water that we’ll bet you didn’t know. Raindrops are not tear-shaped. Scientists, using high-speed cameras, have discovered that raindrops resemble the shape of a small hamburger bun. About 70% of the human body is water. Life on earth probably originated in water. More than half of the world's animal and plant species live in the water. Almost 75% of the earth is covered in water. The human body needs 2 liters of water a day in our climate; we can last only a few days without water. Most of our food is water: tomatoes (95%), spinach (91%), milk (90%), apples (85%), potatoes (80%), beef (61%), hot dogs (56%). [iframe src="http://www.reekoscience2.com/EquationSolve.aspx?puzz=19" height="180"]Not sure what's going on here? Check out the instructions here!

You may already know that deep inside its stony crust, the Earth's core is made of hot liquid rock (magma). and there's a good reason why geologists believe magma is pretty powerful stuff. After all, it's what causes volcanoes to erupt. Magma results from the extreme heat of the earth's interior. At certain depths, the heat is so great it partly melts the rock inside the earth. When the rock melts, it produces much gas (now, who does that sound like?), which becomes mixed with the magma. Volcanoes are mountains with openings or vents that reach down in the Earth to where magma is found. Sometimes the heat at the Earth's core or center causes bubbles of carbon dioxide gas in magma to get bigger and expand.

Saturn is Reeko’s favorite planet (although Uranus, which makes great joke material, comes in a close 2nd).  Like Jupiter, Saturn is a large, gaseous planet composed mostly of the gases hydrogen and helium. Saturn has a magnetic field 1,000 times stronger than Earth's but not as strong as Jupiter's. Due to its gaseous nature, Saturn's density is so low that it could float in an ocean of water. It probably has a core similar to that of Jupiter. It is covered with cloud bands, some forming cyclonic patterns like Jupiter's, but the colors appear more subdued than do Jupiter's because of an atmospheric haze that covers the clouds. Saturn is surrounded by a spectacular ring system (see the picture above). Galileo observed these rings in 1610,

[sc:commonscripts] Lava is molten rock that pours out of volcanoes or from cracks in the earth. It comes from deep in the earth where the heat is great. There, it is called magma. When lava first comes to the surface it is red-hot, reaching temperatures from 7 to 12 times hotter than boiling water. Lands that were once covered with lava often become quite fertile after weathering has broken the lava into fine soil. Some lavas, such as a glassy lava called perlite, are heated in furnaces. They expand into a frothy material used to manufacture lightweight concrete. There are two kinds of lava. One kind, called aa, is viscous (sticky) and moves slowly. The other kind, called pahoehoe, is so fluid that when it first erupts it

There's an old saying that if you are standing in a boat in the middle of a lake and dropped a cannonball into the water, the water level of the lake would actually drop? This seems contradictory to common sense because as we all know, when you drop an object into a body of water the water level rises because of the volume of water that the object displaces. But guess what?  This old saying is really true.  Read on... For example, if you fill your bathtub with water all the way to the brim and then climb into the tub, the water will spill over the edge of the tub. This happens because of the large amount of water that your body displaces when you

[sc:commonscripts] The eye is the organ of sight. It is our most important organ for finding out about the world around us. We use our eyes in almost everything we do--reading, working, watching movies and television, playing games, and countless other activities. Sight is our most precious sense, and many people fear blindness more than any other disability. The human eyeball measures only about 1 inch (25 millimeters) in diameter. Yet the eye can see objects as far away as a star and as tiny as a grain of sand. The eye can quickly adjust its focus between a distant point and a near one. It can be accurately directed toward an object even while the head is moving. The eye does not actually see objects. Instead, it