 Hi everybody. Thank you again for joining us. This is so wonderful. I know it's just a little bit of time between events and I'm so excited we're coming up to the last hour, last two science programs. And again, if you have any feedback for us on Slido, share with us any of your questions, answer our polls, wondering where you're joining us from for this Super Science Saturday. And today, again, we're going to have Jared Lee. He's going to be up next and I'm going to just say hi Jared. Can you see us well? Yep. I can see you. Hi Lorena. Hi. And then we're going to take some questions through Slido. So join us on the bottom of the webpage, join Slido and ask those questions. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to you Jared. Take it away. All right. So I'm glad to see you all virtually. Well, I guess I can't see you technically, but normally at these wizard shows, we do a lot of experiments that you really can't do at home. Either they're demos like Jeff and Cecile had earlier where you need a lot of chemistry equipment and vent hoods and things like that. But I thought, especially with a show at home, I thought it would be good to do an experiment that you all could do at home. So in a few seconds we'll play the video, but this is definitely an experiment that you can do at home and I encourage you to check it out after the video. So Paul, could you go ahead and play the video please? Hi everyone. My name is Jared Lee and I work at NCAR in the research applications lab, mainly doing renewable energy forecasting. But in my other job, I'm a wizard, an NCAR wizard. So I've been in the show the last two or three years. You might recognize me, although this year I don't have my cool pointy hat or my wizard robe. And I do wish that we could be up in the Mesa lab. So I hope you're, but I hope that this year you're having a good time watching all the videos from the other wizards through the day and other experiments, other science content. And hopefully next year we can be in the Mesa lab all back together again in person. Because I certainly love seeing all your smiling faces, hearing all your energy, your laughter, shouting of your questions and answers. It's a lot of fun to do these shows in person. But as we all know, we've been home a lot the last seven, eight months or so. And when we have gone out, say to the grocery store, we've had to wear masks pretty much everywhere we go when we're around other people in order to keep them safe from COVID-19. So as we've been wearing masks a lot and been home a lot, I've had a lot of time to think, what else could we use masks for? So I have several of these reusable cloth face masks like this one here and the one I was just wearing that got me thinking like what else could these be used for? But you know if you hold this upside down, it looks kind of like a parachute a little bit, maybe if you squint. So that got me wondering like could a face mask be used as a parachute to stop say an egg from breaking when it hits the ground? And maybe it takes more than one, maybe how many face masks would it take to safely land an egg using the masks as a parachute? So do you think we should do that? My three-year-old son Evan thinks we should do that, so let's go. So as I said, I have several of these cloth reusable face masks. But for this experiment, since I don't know if the eggs are going to break or not, I really don't want to risk getting egg yolk or egg white staining one of my nicer face masks. So what I did instead is I went to Costco and bought a pack of standard one-time use disposable face masks. These also come in the standard surgical blue that you normally see everywhere, but I thought black is better for a wizard and it's more slimming. So we have several face masks here laid out. Parachutes made from one, two, four, and six masks. So I'll just demonstrate with the one mask for now. So these are the standard over-the-ear face masks. So we have a safety pin hooked in here to a hair tie. And if you don't have a hair tie, a rubber band can work as well. And for the basket, we have two really small Tupperware containers. Any small plastic container could work, but you want to make sure that the egg can't just rattle around too much, otherwise that might cause the egg to break artificially. So we have two baskets because in one of the baskets, we'll add a layer of padding with just a little bit of Play-Doh, just as a little insulation because I have a feeling I have a feeling that might help. We also have also have clothes pins here to attach the mask or attach the parachute rather to the little bucket. So what we do is you turn the little bucket upside down and run the clothespin through the hair tie and then do it over here. See if I can do this. A wizard should be able to do this with both hands. And I'm right-handed. All right. So now we have our little parachute. Now we're ready to put our egg inside and try to nestle it in there. And you can see it just sits in there right like that. So it's this container is actually just about the perfect size for an egg. So do you think we're ready to try this out? I think so. Let's go. So the other supply that I didn't mention just a couple of seconds ago is a ladder. And this is useful. This is a six-foot ladder, but this is useful just to get a little bit of extra height so that we can really test out this parachute well. And so all of these supplies that I've shown you probably have at home, at least most of you I would assume, but still it'd be good to have one of your parents outside with the ladder just to make sure that you're safe and you don't fall. And also, before you start testing egg parachutes with masks, you want to make sure that your mom or your dad didn't have plans to use those to make scrambled eggs for breakfast tomorrow. So here we have an egg in a basket with one mask as a parachute. So do you think that one mask will be enough to slow down this egg so that it doesn't break when it hits the ground? What do you think? Well, I think let's have a countdown. We should have a countdown to to drop our egg. This is this will be from a height of about seven feet or so. So let's have a countdown from five. So five, four, three, two, one. Oh, let's come check out the damage. And we have a lot of yolk and a very, very cracked egg. So this egg did not survive the fall with just one mask. So I think we need to try two masks. Let's see how that goes. So now for our second attempt, we have a parachute that's made of two masks. This has a much larger surface area than the one mask did. And so it should be able to generate a lot more air resistance and slow down slow down the egg quite a bit more effectively than the one mask. So do you think that two masks will do the trick as a pair as an egg parachute? All right, let's have a countdown again from five. So I'm dropping it from about the same height, seven feet or so. So countdown from five. Five, four, three, two, one. That didn't sound good either. And that egg is also pretty badly cracked. Good for scrambled eggs, if that. So clearly two two masks isn't enough. So I think let's try four. Let's double it. So for our next experiment, we're trying a four mask parachute. Now if you just have four masks together, string them together, they're going to be gaps between those masks. So you need something to try to hold them together. So the first thing that we tried to do is we used safety pins to pin them together. But it was quite apparent after we did that that there would still be significant gaps between between the masks. And what happens when you have gaps between them, it's not allows air to flow through those gaps. And that makes the parachute not work quite as effectively. And so we need to have as much air resistance as possible to slow down this basket with the egg. And so instead, what we did is we use duct tape. So we have duct tape along the seams of the masks on both on both sides, actually. So let's let's see if this works. So I'll find out the ladder. So do you think that a four mask parachute is going to work? All right, so let's have a countdown from five. Five, four, three, two, one. I also heard that sickly sound of a breaking egg again, I fear. Yeah, although this one is not as badly broken as the previous eggs. The first two eggs were smashed pretty well. This one, it's still cracked pretty badly, but it seems to have had a somewhat reduced impact. So I'm cautiously optimistic that six masks will work. So let's try that next. So for our next experiment, we have six masks as a parachute arranged in a three by two array. So it looks kind of like a parachute that you'd see a hang glider use, maybe. So let's see if this will work. So do you think that this six mask parachute will work? All right, let's have a countdown from five. Five, four, three, two, one. Well, it seemed to fall a little more slowly, but I also heard the classic egg crack. So yeah, that one, that one smacked pretty good and is pretty badly broken. I think this one, it hit the, hit the clothespin, so I think that's why it broke even more. So I think we need to try something else to try to help out our parachute. So as we saw in our last experiment, using six masks as a parachute, unfortunately did not prevent the egg from breaking. It didn't give quite enough air resistance though. It did seem like it was falling more slowly. So I think we need a little bit of help for our parachute, and we're going to use Play-Doh for that help. So we bought, we have a whole bunch of these one ounce Play-Doh containers that we got at Costco to hand out for trick or treating. So I don't know if that makes you want to come by our house or not next year for trick or treating because we give out these and not candy. I don't know if that makes us lame or cool, but that's what we do. Anyway, so take out this Play-Doh and fashion it into basically a little pillow or a pad with a little bit of an indentation down here in the middle for the egg. So we stick this down into, down into the container. Now before we put on the egg, we'll get the parachute all hooked up. Hopefully I'm doing this the right way. Make sure we're not all tangled up. It's pretty good. All right, now we'll grab an egg, stick it in the basket. So now we have the egg in the basket with some padding. And with this padding what we think it will do is it'll act kind of like an airbag does in your car so that if you do get into an accident and the airbags deploy, the airbags will absorb some of the force and protect you from getting injured quite as badly. So that's what we hope will happen with this egg. So do you think that a six mask parachute with a little bit of Play-Doh padding in the bottom will keep the egg from breaking? All right, well let's have a countdown from five and find out. Five, four, three, two, one. It bounced out. So I think not a crack on this egg. So I think what we've learned is that not only are airbags important, but so are seat belts. So make sure you wear your seat belt. Make sure you wear your mask. And I hope you all stay safe and have fun trying this experiment. Hope to see you next year in the Mesa lab. That was awesome. Thank you so much. As you can see, I am taking your advice. I'm wearing my mask just to kind of show it off. That is a really cool mask. But that's a great way to repurpose masks. Yeah. I've kind of been wondering for a long time. Like I said at the beginning of the video, what can we do? What other uses can we use for these masks, especially since we're wearing them all the time? So yeah, what can we do? So I thought I'd come up with something fun. So while you were doing that and I was watching, I actually have a mask and I thought it would be cool to make it a parachute for baby Yoda. That is awesome. And then I save eggs and I could eat them. And then I could just have some fun adventures. Well, at least you don't have to worry about baby crochet baby Yoda breaking. Yes, it is crochet. So I definitely get to look out on that one. Yeah, this is amazing. And of course, with your adults at home, responsibility first, ask them what materials if you're using eggs, if they can be used. If you have some old eggs lying around or things like that. I wonder if it makes a difference if you use boiled eggs versus fresh eggs. Is it heavier? I actually don't know. I think, I mean, it has the same mass. So it's just a matter of like if you were if you were to boil the egg, and this is a question I actually don't know the answer to. But if you're to boil the egg, you have all the same mass inside, but with the chemical reactions that harden the egg white and the egg yolk, does that I would think it would be the still the same mass. So I think it would still weigh the same, but I'm not totally sure. Science, another question to be solved by everyone who's watching today. Maybe we can try that out next year. That'll be awesome. And of course, like, we do have some questions. So let's go ahead and see what they're asking. Let's go ahead and see the first question. And it's from Karen. Is there a way to keep the egg from falling out? So I suspect this is my wife asking the question and she's downstairs. So a way that you could, like I mentioned, because on the last time, when the egg bounced out, and we did try that a couple of different times subsequently, and it kept bouncing out. So we did come up with an idea of maybe using a like a rubber band and like a little, I don't know how well how well you can see this here, but this is a a little clip like at the end of a bread bag to keep a bread bag shut. So that if you were to weave the rubber band down in here, and then maybe hold that over the little container, that might do enough to keep the egg from bouncing out. So we did not try that experiment. There's several more experiments that I would have liked to try, but we were also running out of time before the snow started to fall. Awesome. And if anybody out there tries these experiments out, anything you've seen that, you know, was recommended, not the ones that weren't recommended for at home doing, but if you do anything like the egg drop, definitely tag at NCAR or UCAR and let us see what are those experiments? What did you come up with that worked better or, you know, kept that egg inside from falling out? Maybe a little seat belt sorts. Thank you so much for answering Karen's email question. Let's go with Griffin. What would happen if you went higher on the ladder? So we did before coming up with just standing on the ladder and dropping it from about seven feet or so, we did have the idea of me climbing up on the roof of our house. Part of why we didn't do that is we didn't want to demonstrate potentially unsafe practices or get NCAR's safety office concerned about my safety. So if you were to drop it from a higher height, like say you were at a higher ladder, you could climb up there safely, gravity would be pulling down the pulling down the basket, the egg and the parachute for a longer period of time. On the flip side, the parachute would have more opportunity to slow down the egg. So that's it. I don't exactly know what the answer to that question is. I'd be very interested to test it out to find out when the air resistance would slow it down just enough. And kind of a flip side question of that is we did this experiment in suburban Denver, Colorado, altitude about a mile high, but as you know, the air is a lot thinner up here at about a mile altitude than it is at sea level. We have about, I think it's about 20% to 25% thinner air here at a mile altitude than we do at sea level. And so I would be really interested to try the same exact experiment with the same setup at sea level to find out, because as you have a lot more air molecules at sea level, for instance, would that 25% thicker air end up providing just enough additional air resistance that, say, six masks without the padding would keep it safe? And I don't know, obviously I couldn't, we can't really go anywhere right now safely. So I couldn't say go to the beach somewhere and try that out. But that's something that I was thinking about in my head. Like, I wonder if this would work. So if anyone is watching, say, from, you know, coastal California or somewhere along the coast, maybe you could try that and then let me know. That's awesome. It's always so great to work with science, because you never know the answer and it's always changing, but you can always hypothesize or make an educated guess on what might happen. And that goes into Genevieve's other question. What would happen if you had two eggs? I think if you had two eggs, so first off, you'd need a bigger basket in order to... Okay, so he's, Jared, your connection was a little bit off, but I heard that you would probably need some, a bigger basket to hold each egg. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. So you would need, yeah, you would need a bigger basket to hold two eggs. That's the first thing. And that would also increase the weight or the mass in the basket. And so you would need a better parachute to slow it down. So you would need, you know, more masks. You would need more surface area on the parachute to slow down the velocity of, to slow down, yeah, slow down the fall velocity of the basket and the eggs enough so that it would not, the force of impact on the ground would not cause the eggs to break. That's awesome. And it's a lot of engineering, maybe if you have a different type of basket, different type of cushion. So definitely looking forward to seeing any social media posts about this to follow up with Super Science Saturday experiment that you've presented here. Yeah. And that's where I'd say like, even if you had a, we used a kind of a Tupperware basket, but if you were to use a different type of basket, like say, you know, maybe a, a wick, a small wicker basket, or something that's maybe a little more flexible and could absorb some of that force and direct it, direct it out to the sides and up the edges of the container, or, or as, as, as the basket hits, it could compress just a little bit and absorb some of that force that then you might be able to get away with fewer masks possibly, but the plastic is pretty rigid and most of that force is just transmitted straight through to the egg and breaks the shell of the egg. Yeah, it definitely makes me appreciate bumpers on cars a lot more. For sure. Thank you so much. And Chachokai and Anaya are asking, do you think, can an older egg break less easily than a fresh egg? That is a great question. And I, I don't, again, I don't know the answer to that. The eggs that, the eggs that we tested were fairly fresh. I just purchased them probably from the grocery store, probably about four days before we did that. So they were still reasonably fresh. I think the expiration date was still probably a couple of weeks out. So it'll be awesome for people to experiment and let us know. Thank you so much. And Alice is asking another question or Alice is asking a question. What are your variables in this experiment? How did you control the experiment? And did you collect any data during this experiment? So I love people thinking like a scientist. So I love hearing what are the variables here. So I think some of the variables that I can think on the top of my head are first the mass or the weight of the mass of the egg, the basket, the masks, basically all the materials that will be falling. So, so there's that's one variable. Another variable would be in terms of the size of the basket, like can the egg rattle around or are there obstructions in the egg? Like for instance, those clothes pins, a couple of times the eggs broke, we're pretty sure because it as it broke, even though the egg couldn't move around much, it's still jammed into the clothes pin. And so if we could maybe pad that clothes pin on the inside, that might also provide just enough buffer to keep it from breaking maybe, but we didn't, we didn't test that out. Another variable is what is the height from which you were dropping it? Another variable is, you know, what is the wind speed, like say a crosswind? Fortunately, the day that we tested it and kind of the geometry of our yard and house, it was blocking what little breeze that there was, but if there is a strong wind, that might blow the basically blow your mask or kind of shear it. And so then it's not really exposing its maximum surface area to gently fall to the ground. So then would you say that because there was no wind, you know, this how did you control the experiment? It seems like you didn't really control it, you just kind of went up onto the ladder safely and then just dropped it with the variable of the environment around you as well. Yeah, and so basically the environment or the variables that we controlled for were the number of masks and therefore the surface area of the parachute. And then also the variable of basically force absorption in the basket because the last time we added that play-doh to just absorb a little bit of extra force. So those are the variables that we controlled and tested for, but yeah, there are several more variables that we could explore. I wish that I had tested, that I had timed how long it took from dropping the egg basket to the time that it impacted the ground because I did notice at least to my eye, it seemed like as we got to four and then six masks, it did seem like it fell a little more slowly. But if I were to measure the exact distance from where I dropped it to the ground and then measured the amount of time that it took to fall, then I could calculate its average speed or its average velocity in its fall. That's so great. Thank you so much, Jared. I think that answered most of the questions in this one, especially collecting the data. So definitely if you are doing this experiment on your own with your adults at home, definitely a room for you to collect data with your notebook. And with that, Jared, I would like to say thank you so much for joining us today. All right. Thanks, everyone. Hope to see you next year in person. Sounds good. And we are coming up to 3.30. We're going to put that one more slide up with the schedule so you can see what is coming up and it will be our grand finale. Again, thank you so much for joining and I'll see you with Tiffany in a bit. See you soon.