Home Educators Association of Roxboro

   Last year during our Wednesday afternoon warehouse visits, volunteer HEAR moms started hosting occasional mini-science lessons for the younger HEAR youth, in an effort to encourage curiosity and a desire to learn more about science. The kids participated in many lessons including how to make liquid to solid goop, how to force an egg into a bottle, how to make fake snot and even how to extract DNA from a strawberry.

    Recently we decided to start back with the lessons and attempted to learn about Triboluminescence, or as we called it, "sparks in the dark". According to Wikipedia, Triboluminescence is an optical phenomenon in which light is generated when material is pulled apart, ripped, scratched, crushed, or rubbed through the breaking of chemical bonds in the material. In other words, you'll make sparks when you bite or hit a Wintergreen Lifesaver, sugar cube or sugary candy with a hammer. In theory at least.....
   We assembled the kids in the girl's bathroom (the only room that gets really dark and that was big enough to squish us all inside), explained what was supposed to happen, then handed the Lifesaver candies to all of the kids, with instructions to prepare to pop them into their mouths (after trying to dry their mouths as much as possible. That was fun to watch!) and bite down on command once the lights were out. Alexis Fisher volunteered to control the lights, and flipped them off when signaled. "Go!" was the command so everyone bit down and...nothing happened. No sparks at least, but there were lots of ewwws and spitting sounds since several kids didn't care for the taste.

Next, we spread newspaper on the floor and attempted to make Triboluminescence/ sparks in the dark by whacking the Lifesavers with a hammer. Lights out...and again no sparks. We then tried the experiment with pliers. Again nothing. Several took turns experimenting with sugar cubes and peppermint candies, all with the same results. This was not a problem for the kids, who now understand that scientists learn through trial and error all the time. All went away happy with sugar cubes and peppermint candies to chew on, leaving the Wintergreen Lifesavers for the lead scientist to enjoy.
The conclusion was, possibly the hammer was at fault. The head scientist for this experiment was in a hurry and forgot to grab a "real" hammer before leaving home and only had a meat mallet. Hopefully this will entice the participants to try this experiment at home with the proper equipment.
Being good scientists, we cleaned up after ourselves before we left. Volunteer mom Lynn Brandon grabbed a broom and swept up the evidence of our failed experiment and we turned the lights out one last time as we left the bathroom.

From the excited chatter of participants, it appears we all look forward to the next lesson, whatever it is!