The Sandbox

Today we began making Wilson a sandbox. Joey, Wilson and I helped cut, nail, glue, and screw it all together. All that we have to do now is sand it. The sandbox is about 20" x 20" x 5". We got a 50-pound bag of sand to fill it up, but we need to get a bit more.

Go

Over the past week, my dad and I have been learning how to play Go from our neighbor Randolph. It's an ancient Chinese strategy game. The goal is to capture your opponents pieces and to grab and hold territory. Follow this link for in-depth rules. Follow this link for the general rules and history. As of right now, we don't have a board or pieces, so we're borrowing from Randolph in exchange for lacquering the pieces for him.

Here's my dad and I playing the game. (I'm white).

I won that one by about 50 points (that is normally not too much). The last game we played I won 107-0 (that is a lot)

The Sacramento Zoo

Today we went to the Sacramento Zoo in (obviously) Sacramento. We got to see tons of different animals and learn a bit about each of them.

There were mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. We got to see Jaguars, Lions, Tigers, Condors, Hyenas, Dwarf Crocodiles, Lizards, Poisonous Tree Frogs, Great Hornbills, South African Parrots, Spiky Tailed Lizards, Boa Constrictors, Turtles, Tortoises, Flamingos, Giraffes, Zebras, Orangutans, Chimpanzees, Ring-Tailed Lemurs, Anteaters, Snow Leopards, Bongos, Addaxes, Kangaroos, Otters, Red Pandas, and some kind of lemur who's head looks like a dog's and a body like a cat's.

My favorite exhibit were the Chimpanzees. There were two of them wrestling and chasing each other around on the ground and some other ones watching them and us from the ropes hanging from the ceiling of the exhibit. Also in the primate area, there was this one monkey who was sitting in a very humanoid position. It was actually a bit freaky in a weird sort of way.

Once we were done looking at the exhibits, we ate lunch at a cafe at the zoo and then went to a small play area to rest. Here is a picture of Wilson in a spider cutout. It almost looks photoshopped. He also went into a butterfly cutout along with Joey. All the pictures are on Wilson's blog, so go and take a look!

Experiments

This week I've been doing a lot of experiments with fire, boiling water, and freezing things.

Fire: I tried to see if I could build a small, contained fire and the best way to do it. The best way is to start it is to light it from the middle, and to make sure enough air can get to it.

Boiling Water: I put candies into a pot of boiling water to see what happens. Once its fully disintegrated it creates little area of yellow bubbles that stay separate from the rest.

Freezing: Most of my experiments that I did went under this category. Most of them comcerned freezing different things different ways. One was figuring out how to make the ice almost completely white. Some other ones were soaking things like paper and freezing them.
One interesting one was putting water, maple syrup, soap, and oil into a small cup and then seeing what happens. Putting it in the freezer only caused the water to freeze, the oil, syrup, and soap just got a bit more viscous. Although it didn't fully freeze, everything stayed separate from each other, even the soap! The syrup was at the bottom, so therefore, the heaviest. Then there was the soap, then water, and on the top was the oil.