Camp Zap Day 1: Poop, Sand Crabs, and Ice Cream

Today was our first ever day of Camp Zap and it was a blast!  

Stay tuned every day this week to discover where we go and what we learn.

Hard hats on and ready for our tour of the Hyperion Waste Treatment Facility in El Segundo.

The water used by 3,000,000 people - including you! - makes its way here when you flush or wash or do dishes.
Huge machines at the Head Works separate out the non-organic material:
toilet paper scraps, plastic wrappers, sometimes even body parts and money!
The non-organic material gets chopped up and buried in landfills.

There were definitely some foul smells!

The organic materials (yes, poop) get removed here.  Bacteria feast on the waste.
The temperature in these domes reaches 127 degrees Farenheit!

After the water gets treated twice, it looks pretty clean.
Even though we saw seagulls swimming in it and it will get pumped out to the ocean,
it's not safe for human use.

After our fascinating tour, we crossed a bridge and enjoyed lunch at the beach!

We caught plenty of sand crabs and got pretty soaked in the process.

Last stop: Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream!

If only summer could last forever!

Welcome to the Table, Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine & Oganesson!

It's time to buy a new periodic table for the science lab!
Those four new elements officially recognized last December have been named!




Wonder how these names were chosen?  Read about it HERE

From Junk to Art

I'm back in the USA (Minnesota) and went to the coolest place last week.  It's called House of Balls.

This artist takes junk and makes art, using his impressive imagination and some tools I sure wish we had in our Innovation Lab!

The artist (Allen Christian) and me modeling his wacky helmets.

This is a plasma cutter.  It can cut through steel effortlessly and makes sparks go flying!

Allen is using the plasma cutter to make a design on an old kitchen pan.

The finished project!

A collection of old brushes used to make a face.  

Weird stuff was mounted everywhere.

Any guess what this used to be?

This is carved from the same type of object as the one above...Any ideas??

You'll never guess what Allen took apart to harvest all these colorful wooden parts.

Doesn't it seems fun to try making a doll from odds and ends at home?
Do it!

Some Six-Legged Spectacles of the Andean Cloud Forest

I saw vivid and unusual insects (especially butterflies and moths) every single day at Yanayacu.  Is there anything on Earth more beautiful and delicate than the wings of insects?

See those clear windows in the Atlas moth's wings?

This one is like one of those velvet paintings!

This insect is camouflaged to look like an old leaf.

Those spots are meant to trick predators into thinking the moth has enormous eyes.

This is a moth who mimics a wasp to avoid being eaten.

Moths and butterflies rested on every surface imaginable.

Take a look at this grasshopper's jumping legs! 

A well-camouflaged grasshopper.

Rhinoceros beetle with a giant horn.

This moth's wings look like an artist's painting of the solar system.

Take a look that the length of this moth's proboscis 

So many of the moths were fuzzy.

I pinned these for the collection. 

This photo and the ones below were taken inside a butterfly garden in Quito's Jardin Botanico.

Clear wings!

Gorgeous chrysalis.

This boy and his butterfly were too cute not to take a photo!