The Smell Of Energy

Today's Field Trip Tuesday focused on the educational aspect of chemistry or physics or something like that. Science never was my favorite subject! But the field trip sure was fun.

We went to a "Soap Bar" and made soap... We started with these cubes of "soap base."

We put the chunks in the microwave (turns out that a microwave is a key tool when making soap) and we got this. We poured the base into a cup and then picked out a soap color. Alice and Owen learned that sparkles aren't a "color" - they only add sparkle. They had to actually have a color base first. Both decided to use color and sparkles for their soap.
Then they picked out a fragrance. A typical bottle of perfume is 5% oil - we smelled bottles which were 100% oil - wow. Intense and overwhelming. Alice ended up with Oatmeal/Honey; Peppermint; Champagne; and Energy. Owen was partial to Energy. You have to smell it to know what it is. Or have a boy at home... then maybe you can relate to the smell of energy. Time to mix the melted soap cubes, color, sparkles, and fragrance all together. The "soap artist" showed the kids how to do it, but when it was time to do their own, they did it all by themselves. Mix, mix, mix...Then we poured it into the chosen molds. Let me tell ya' - it was tough to choose a mold. Alice spent quite a bit of time sorting through the pile of molds. She had it narrowed down to flowers, penguins, horses, frogs, geckos, farm animals, leaves, tea pots, or a weird mask thing. She went with the leaves and a frog. Owen made a skull (with freaky red eyes) and a rocket. Here are the leaves Alice made. Into the freezer for 30 minutes, and ta da! The kids had fun. And they deserved a trip across the street to Rocket Donuts. Yum. First of all, Rocket Donuts has awesome donuts. And second of all, they have a spaceship room. Owen discovered that if he touched the spaceman, that his helmet would open and play funky space music. It worked the first time he tried (the girl working behind the counter actually had a remote control to make it work). The second time, it didn't work for Owen (the girl behind the counter was busy - but Owen and Alice didn't catch on to that - they thought they could make it work all by themselves, just by touching the spaceman). It's a long story, but it involved Owen and Alice inappropriately touching the poor spaceman to try and get him to open his helmet and play the music. Melinda and I sat at the table and cracked up. Another fun Tuesday...