Lego Transformers from the Lab

This is the largest transformer that I've built out of Lego so far.

Here it is in vehicle form.

transforming...

into a standing robot.  On the bottom, you'll notice the wheel feet, and the exhaust pipes at the back of the vehicle form turn into cannons at the top.

This is his mini-con, which is a smaller transformer that belongs to a larger transformer.  Here it is in tank form.

This is him transformed to robot form.  He has tracks for legs which allow him to roll around in an upright position.  When the arms and legs are on the ground, the cannon points outward.

This is the mini-con holding a cannon.  The cannon is actually his mini-con; the mini-con of a mini-con!

Here is the cannon mini-con.  All you have to do is turn the cannon upside down and it turns into a mini-con.

These are my transformers.  Mwa ha ha ha ha.

My Garden

This is my garden in May before it was planted.  I'm adding compost so that it will grow better.

I planted peas, carrots and a pumpkin.

This is an early photo of my pumpkin.  I wanted to grow it so I could enter it in a garden contest that I'm having with my grandparents.

Here is my pumpkin now.  My grandpa is very competitive so he tried to put a curse on my pumpkin.

This is my first harvest of peas.  They were very very very delicious.

This is my garden now- the peas are on the left, the pumpkin is on the right.   My carrots are in the bottom left corner.

This is my squash.  My mom is always trying to steal the zucchini for lunch.  I'm growing one gigantic squash to take over the world.  Mwaa ha ha ha!  (I'll save the photo for another day.)

Shadow Puppets

These shadow puppets are made with my hands.  (Or are they?)

Can you see the cockatoo?

This is a moose.

A barking dog.

Another barking dog.

A cat.

A starship.

Paper Airplanes

I've been working on some paper airplanes.  (Above: the S.S. Explorer)

This is the book that I used to make them:

It's called Kids' Paper Airplane Book by Blackburn and Lammers.

In this photo, I'm making The Count.  Mwaa haa haa!

You tear out the coloured airplane pages and follow the instructions for folding.  I've noticed that usually you start with the paper flipped over on the wrong side, in order to get the picture to come out right-side up.

Here's the folded Count.  Once again, mwaa ha ha.  This one was probably the best flyer out of all the paper airplanes I made.

Here are some others-

The Robo-Chopper:

Even though this one's not a plane, it went pretty well.  It spins around and around and around when you drop it from up high.

The Robo-Chopper was probably the easiest one to make.  After doing a few, I could make them without looking at the book.

Warning:  On the next photo, you might want to cover your eyes!

This is the Flying Saucer:

This one freaks my dad out.  I like to put it on his face.  Ha ha ha.

After experimenting with the planes in the book, I tried making my own version of the count, with regular paper. 

I did this by looking at the book and following the instructions.  The photo is after I tried it, and that's why it has all the folds.  This test-flight didn't go so well, so I unfolded it and tried again.  This is a prototype for more flying things to come.

Mechanical Lego Arm

I worked on building a mechanical arm with Lego today. 

This is the arm in it's open form.

This is it closing up.

If I disconnect the bottom, it becomes a shorter tool.

It takes a while to fix if it breaks.  It has to be adjusted exactly the same on both sides until it's working properly.  In this photo, I'm adjusting it so that it will become curved, as you can see in the next photo:

This can be useful reaching something high up on a shelf, or on the top of the fridge, like today when I reached my mom's camera.  (She's just finding this out now.  She seems a little surprised and unimpressed.)

The mechanical arm can also be useful in reaching for random objects, as long as they're not too heavy;

in touching food that you don't really like;

and in reaching small snacks that you do like to eat.

I might make a few adjustments to the arm, and make it look better.

Science with Candy

This is some of my Halloween candy.  You can do awesome experiments with your Halloween candy.

In this experiment, you can get many colours out of a bag of m&m's.

Once you get all the colours painted on a piece of paper, the dye in the colours might start to separate if you add water.

This is a smartie experiment.  If you use a small sieve and rinse the smarties, you can see how the colour washes off.

If you soak the smarties in a glass of water, you can get colours like this,

and this!

Colours and letters will soak off skittles too.  Look very closely for the floating 'S':

Hint: it's between the orange and red skittles.

Next, my caramel experiment.

For this experiment, I soaked caramels in warm water, cold water, and vinegar with baking soda.

The hot water is the mushed up one; the one soaked in cold water has the deeper lines; and the one from the vinegar and baking soda dissolved the little bumps.

Next, an experiment to see which chocolate bars will float.

We found that the kit kat and aero bars floated because they have air bubbles inside.  The crunchie, oh henry, caramilk, and hershey bar all sank.

Then we stirred them around in hot water.  The aero and the hershey bar dissolved completely.

See if you can guess which the others are:

Another experiment with m&m's showed us that you can paint with them.

Dip them in water for a few seconds, and use a paintbrush in the colour or just hold them in your fingers and draw with them like crayons.

For my last experiment, vinegar and baking soda takes the colour off m&m's and smarties quicker than just regular warm water. 

In this photo, you can see the carnauba wax floating at the top of the glass.  That's the glossy glaze put on candies to make them shiny.

Halloween

Here is my magical cat, and the pumpkins me and my brother carved.

The one on the right is my brother's, and the one on the left is mine.  His name is Jack.