For the second year in a row AAA has participated in the Scott Family Amazeum NWA Maker Days!
What is Maker Days? It is a celebration of maker-spaces and tinkering that happens in schools across NW Arkansas. During the first week of May schools across the region participate in district-wide making activities. Each school takes pictures and videos that are shared on social media using the hashtag #NWAMakerDays. The community can also follow along on social media to celebrate and be inspired by what each school is doing.
For this year two of our AMAZING science teachers planned their projects to take place during the NWA Maker Days. Thank you to Mrs. Amy Foust who teaches Middle School Science and High School Human Anatomy and Phisiology and Mrs. Susan Kedrowski who teaches High School Chemistry.
This week Mrs. Kedrowski's high school chemsitry classes are electroplating metal casts made from cuttlefish bones! WAIT, WHAT!!?
YES! Students will take the bones from those cute, aquatic cephalopods and will use them as molds to pour hot, molten metal into them to create a miniture metal casts. These small casts will then be submerged into an electrofied liquid solution with copper metal. The electrons of the copper particles break from their original and chemically bond on top of the introduced metal creating a thin plated layer of copper. SCIENCE IS AWESOME! ...except for maybe the cuttlefish.
How does it work? The bones of the cuttlefish have a soft interior making it ideal for metal casting. Students carve or press an object into the interior to make a mold of the object. Pewter is then melted and poured into the mold (don't worry, no children were hurt during this proces, only cuttlefish- kidding, they all passed a long time ago).
The metal cools and the casts are popped out of the mold. Now the casts are submerged into an electrofied solution that causes copper ions to migrate to the pewter and bond creating a metal plating.
THANK YOU to the SCOTT FAMILY AMAZEUM for hosting the 2nd annual Maker Days and supporting schools across Northwest Arkansas!
Check out our Arts Integration page on the website to learn more about both science projects and to see more images of student work! https://sites.google.com/artsk...
#NWAMakerDays