Elser Family Blog

Hannah Received a third place in the 6th grade science fair! Good Job Hannah. The title of the experiment was “timing electricity”. The judges comment was “very unique experiment”. The least unique ws Mentos an Coke.. I think there were about 10 of those.

There were a lot of entries.. the Gym was full. This is all three grades;6,7,8.

The upper grade winner did an experiment trying to see the difference betweeen Beef and Chicken DNA.. Pretty impressive.
Kathi is in Chicago today to go to the Oprah show. She will be back tonight.

Hannah is doing a science project for school. Her question is “how long does it take for electricity to travel through a wire? well.. having a dad that has access to test equipment, and wire, helps! She has done just about everything, I have only explained to her how to measure with the oscilloscope, and how to connect the signal generator to the scope and wire to be measured. she has had to do everything else.. It was harder than I thought to explain the concept of “y axis on the scope is voltage, x axis is time”
how do you explain that the still image on the screen is actually a square wave that passes by over and over.. “but its not moving”..

And, the final measurement! the orange trace is the signal going into the wire (the lading edge of a square wave), and the cyan trace is the signal coming out of the other end of 1000feet of wire, 1.23 microseconds later.. neat huh?
The next thing she did was measure an unknown length of wire, and estimate how long is it, by how long it took the signal to pass through it. I am looking forward to seeing how the report actually turns out.

OK, I have been collecting up some pictures since the hard drive disaster. Here are some from the last couple months in no particular order. 🙂
First, the kids made a gingerbread house. they decorated, I did the infrastructure of making the house itself. they did a good job IMHO.

If you did not know, Hannah plays the bassoon. I think she chose it just to annoy her mother. Its an interesting instrument, but a pain to assemble every day.

And, Kath is officially a OTA. she not only graduated, (with honors) but she has passed the certifications, and I believe she just got registered in SC and GA. now all she needs is a job. 🙂

fancy sash there ehe?

Over the Christmas season, there is a forest walk called “lights of the south” where you go through the woods and look at all the decorations. It was fun.

Hey, I made it into a picture.

Do y’all remember doing this? I do.

Melinda does dance class.. This was before a recital.

And this is at the recital with her friend Raven.

I went with Melinda on a field trip to the Ruth Patrick science center. Its a really nice science center in Aiken SC.

Comparing density of similar sized minerals.

Rockwell playing Basket Ball! he is #13.

Building a wood block tower. I remember being his age and doing this. It was lots of fun. Yikes; that room in the background! what the.. I’m sure Kath is going to appreciate this picture.