Namine has been learning about the color spectrum in school. As a hands-on project, she had to make a color wheel and spin it, observing how the colors blend together to make white.
Following the directions in her textbook, Namine put her color wheel on a pencil, pointy side down. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get it to stay upright long enough to observe it spinning. Both Jessica and I tried it, and we had no more success than Namine did.
Since Namine is home schooled, we gave her a pass on the color wheel thing. She understands how the color spectrum works, so we left it at that. Namine, however, did not. She had the idea to flip the pencil and spun it eraser side down, allowing it to stay up longer.
There was a downside to this, however. Since the pencil was spinning on its eraser, it had a wider base and thus better balance, but it also had more friction. This resulted in the color wheel’s colors blending to make a sort of tan color. (I’m told. I have to take Namine’s word for it, since I’m color blind.)
All in all, this was an interesting experience. Namine had a little bit of everything: science, observation, and trying different approaches when things don’t go according to the textbook. (That last will definitely come in handy once she gets a little more into chemistry.)
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