Stanley Park / Vancouver Aquarium

Activity date: 1 January 2011
Cost: $0 (Aquarium members)
Energy level: 3/10

I have always said that my #2 career choice is Marine Biologist. This may be due to excessive viewing of Jacques Cousteau documentaries during my impressionable earlier years, rather than a full understanding of what marine biologists actually do. Still, it no doubt explains why we head off to the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park every six weeks or so.

This particular day, it was quite cold (for Vancouver). We walked 2.5 km along the sea wall, stopping to stomp on icy puddles.

That satisfied the destructive urge, then we headed to the playground until we were all frozen, then into the Aquarium. We saw all our old friends. The octopus was hiding in his cave. The jellyfish looked lovely. And Thing Two enjoyed watching the electric eel through the dome. They had placed electrodes in the water so that when the electric eel zapped, it caused the lights on a Christmas tree to flash.

The rocket

Activity date: August 2010
Energy level: 2 / 10
Cost: $6 (vinegar and baking soda; the rocket was a gift).

Thing 1 got a rocket for his birthday last year. It sat in his closet until he rediscovered it recently.

The rocket gets its propulsion from a familiar chemical reaction -- the CO2 released when you combine vinegar and baking soda. We headed off to the supermarket to buy our  fuel then went to lower Hume Park in New Westminster to launch it.

Conditions were perfect, and there were not too many innocent bystanders. We organized our equipment and made sure we looked stylish for the "before" photo.

You pack the baking soda into the base of the rocket, pour vinegar into rocket, push the rocket down on the base, shake two or three times, set it upright then run!

Our first few attempts fizzled. The baking soda plus vinegar reaction was obviously taking place, but all we saw was bubbles fizzing out the side. We had  to tighten some seals and try again a few times before our first successful launch -- a modest two meters.

After some trial and error we realized that we had to thoroughly clean the base of the rocket before pouring in more baking soda. There was often a gooey mixture of baking soda and vinegar left. The vinegar would quietly react with the fresh baking soda before we really intended the reaction to start.

Our most successful launch was perhaps five meters high. We all took turns shaking the chemicals and placing the rocket ready to launch.