Gingerbread Houses



Beautiful Gingerbread Poinsettias

  Edible architecture! Gingerbread has been baked for centuries, although not in the form we best know it in. Gingerbread was made in the shape of loaves or biscuits, but nowadays most people think of gingerbread as men or houses. I recently visited the "Discovery Science Center", and took pictures of some beautiful creations made of gingerbread. Although some of them don't fit under the category of "men" or "house". Here are my favorite ones! Enjoy!:



Peppermint House






Very Large Gingerbread House

 



Taj Mahal




2011 Countdown




Christmas Tree



Gingerbread Rock Formations





Gingerbread Nativity Scene
(my personal favorite)

  



Gingerbread Western Digital
USB Flash Drive

 


Taco Bell

 

What is the Archimedean Screw?

Archimedean Screw

Archimedes is one of my favorite scientists. He is known for many things, including...

• An explanation of how a lever works, from which induced his famous quote: "Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth."
• The invention the block-and-tackle pulley system
• An improvement on the catapult
• and quite a few other things that I might a post about later

Archimedes was an amazing thinker, and it is very fascinating to read about him (I recommend the book Archimedes and the Door of Science. It was a very long time ago that I read it- it is meant for kids aged 9-12- but it is still very informative and makes a good quick read (try picking it up at your local library). One of my favorite of the inventions by Archimedes is his "Archimedian Screw", which I will be posting about here...

Invented in or around the 3rd century BC, the Archimedean Screw is still used today in quite a few ways. Let's go back in time to when the Archimedean Screw was invented. Imagine you're a farmer. Every year you depend on the Nile as your water source to grow your crops. However, you don't live close enough to the Nile for it to reach your crops when it overflows each year. What do you do? Well, way back then you would have to carry all the water to your farm in buckets, or set up some complex irrigation system (which could take a very, very long time).  Archimedes, when visiting a farm, watched as people carried bucket after bucket after bucket of water from the Nile to the farmland. He didn't think that was good enough. Rather than digging an irrigation system, he tried to think of a way to bring the water up to land level. That was when he came up with the Archimedean Screw. He devised a device that, when you turned a crank, would bring water to the height needed. This is how it worked: there was a curving piece that went around a pole (similar to a thread in a screw) and was placed inside a hollow tube (see picture). When the poll was turned, water was scooped up at the bottom and moved up the screw (Wikipedia has a beautiful animation of how this works. Go here and look to the top right area of the page).

New LED Throwies



LED Throwie Lights

 Christmas is just around the corner. I was keeping an eye out for something related to the holidays to post about, and that was when I found Throwies. They are very awesome and have been called "LED art" and "temporary graffiti". Basically, throwies are short strands of LED lights with magnets. They "stick" to metallic objects. Below is a youtube video of what throwies are and how they are used.  They are easy to make, or you can buy them online. I haven't seen any at stores so far.