Scientist Badge   

This was done over three four weeks, several months;

Week 1

Four bases this week.

Heat rises.

Take a piece of paper or card. Cut out a spiral make a small hole in centre, use hole and a piece of thread to allow spiral to turn freely. Dangle carefully over a night light or similar source of heat. Watch as spiral rotates. Be careful that spiral does not catch fire.

Evaporation

Take a shallow pan of salt water and heat to make water evaporate. What happens? What happens if sugar is used instead of salt? and why?

Electricity

What do you need to make a bulb light, what conducts electricity and what does not. Requires: a source of electricity, battery voltage not mains voltage. a suitable bulb i.e. with similar voltage to battery, bits of foil twig paper etc to complete circuit. (This may have already been covered at school)

Pin Hole Camera

Make a light tight box, attach a sheet of tissue paper over a 'large' hole at one end. Make a 'small' hole at the other end. Look at the tissue paper, tell Hathi that nothing can be seen. Turn box around so that Cub is looking at tissue paper. Tell Hathi that nothing can still be seen, make a tube of card to reduce ambient light. Exclaim that now you can see something but it is very faint and upside down. Why?

Homework.

All the Cubs were given a two week diary to keep a record of the weather.

Week 2

Two bases this week.

Worm Farm

Take a pint pot, fill to a depth of 2cm with soil then add 2cm of sand, repeat until 5cm from top of pot. Add a few worms and persuade them to stay in pot. They are supposed to avoid light, ours liked the light and tried to escape. The Cubs were asked to keep a log of what happened. Eventually reports came in some of them can be viewed from the links below.

Potato Head

Take a potato, slice an end off so that it will stand up. Peel the other end and dip the damp peeled end into some grass seed, Use a small piece of nylon, from a pair of tights, the coarser the denier the better as this means the grass can grow through it easier. Place spud in a saucer of water, the nylon should act like a wick and keep the seed damp. They should grow and give the spud a green "hair do". Add facial features to taste and you have a potato head, beards and moustaches are possible but look very silly, as the 'hair' grows the wrong way.

Remind Cubs about weather record cards.

Week 3

Pulse rates

Take pulse at rest, run around for a while take pulse again, compare, check again see how long it takes to return to normal.

Unusual Animals

 Not actually part of the badge work but interesting all the same. James brought in a few Giant Land snails to see if anyone would give them a good home as apparently they breed very well in captivity. Most of the Cubs held the snails and then washed their hands as they are just like garden snails and leave a slime trail, lovely.

Remind Cubs to bring in weather record cards next week without fail or NO Badge!

Week 4

The potato heads were a bit of a disappointment as most of them went soft and smelly before much 'hair' could grow.