Learning about chemistry with purple cabbage

We started a series of video looking at acids and bases. Fittingly we used purple cabbage as our pH indicator.

What I love about the first video is that Matthew eats the cabbage during it - this really highlights the important point that everything is made up of chemicals (currently a very 'dirty' word).

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The begining of khemistry kid

This was the first video we made. It really was inspired by #RealTimeChem week and was very spontaneous. I was washing up the dishes watching the oil moving around and changing when I added the dishwashing liquid. I thought - hey I could make a video of this with my son.... Interestingly at first I wasn't going to use the dialogue between me and my son. My wife told me I should and that gave birth to the khemistry kid :-)

pH in the kitchen

We extended our learning about acids and bases to the pH scale. I intentionally did not over edit the video video because it really shows the learning process so the video is longer than normal. By the end of the video Matthew was better at matching the pH paper against the pH chart than I was. Matthew also introduced the video with out any prompting from me - he's picking it up quickly. Again using the A, B and N tabs really seems to have helped provide a framework for learning. Make sure you watch till the end. Matthew spontaneously started writing down all that we had been going through. It was almost like he was writing up his lab book. I could learn some lessons from him!!

What a candle needs to burn

Here is our second video and the first under the title of "Khemistry kid" It was really interesting to Matthew start to think about why we can't fill the glass up and how that relates to how much oxygen is in the air. I have also noticed that he still remembers what combustion is a few months later....

Reflections of a chemical dad

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