#15 Freezing Alcohol

November 10th, 2014

freezing-alcohol

This post contains affiliate links. I was compensated for my work in writing this post.

Today we are doing a “Freezing Alcohol” experiment where we will put different amounts of alcohol combined with water in the freezer to see which will freeze first. My younger two children are using Christian Kids Explore Chemistry by Bright Ideas Press, and this is one of the experiments in the book.

Grab three plastic containers with lids. You need lids because alcohol evaporates so easily, and we don’t want the alcohol to evaporate out of the containers and affect our results.

Label the three containers by writing on paper with a black permanent marker. Attach the labels with packing tape. Here are the three labels:

  • Water only
  • 70% Isopropyl Alcohol
  • Water + 70% Isopropyl Alcohol

The water only container is the control. We will see how fast normal water freezes and compare that to the amount of time it takes for alcohol to freeze, if it freezes at all.

Grab your rubbing alcohol from your medicine cabinet. This alcohol will say “70% Isopropyl Alcohol.” Pour the alcohol into the second container.

The third container should have half alcohol and half water. If you put 100 ml of water in the first container and 100 ml of alcohol into the second container, you will want to put 50 ml of water and 50 ml of alcohol into the third container.

freezing-alcohol-2Place all three containers into the freezer and wait two hours. Then pull them out and remove the lids to see what is going on. The first container was frozen solid. The second container was sort of frozen on the bottom, but liquid on the top. The third container was completely liquid with no ice whatsoever.

Even after 24 hours, we have similar results, except for the second container. Take a look:

Alcohol definitely has a lower freezing point than water does. In fact, a normal household freezer (which is around 0 degrees) will never be able to freeze the alcohol unless the temperature of the freezer is lowered considerably! Of course, you would not want to do that to your freezer, or all your food would get freezer burn!

freezing-alcohol-3

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My First Prayer Vigil

November 7th, 2014

my-first-prayer-vigil

This year I participated in my first prayer vigil, and let me tell you, it caused me to feel the heartbeat of the church and to love the church in a way that I had never been able to before. Pastors from all Christian denominations from the Inland Northwest decided to have 40 days of continuous prayer for our city. Each church signed up for 24 hours of prayer, so that there was always someone praying during those 40 days leading to Pentecost. I was out of town on the day of Pentecost, so for me, the main event was the actual vigil itself, and how prayer for the specific needs from the people of my church caused me to have a supernatural love for them. I also felt an ownership and a belonging to the church where I had spent all night praying, and a greater responsibility to contribute to the needs of the body of Christ in that place.

There was a sign up sheet with one-hour increments where you could sign up for just one hour. It seemed strange to me because a prayer vigil was supposed to be a group of people that stayed up all night to pray. Most time slots only had one human. So I determined to go for 10 hours. I ended up arriving an hour earlier, so I prayed for 11 hours in the church, with different people who came and went.

It was interesting to be in the church building overnight. Because I understood the needs of the church for the first time, I was able to pray with all my heart and finally hear the heartbeat of the church. I tell you more about it in this audio:

If you want to keep up with my prayer posts, like my Prayer Facebook Page. And if you want to hear 12 more free prayer audios like this one, click onto my Prayer Articles, and scroll down to the audio section.

 

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What is a Prayer Vigil?

November 5th, 2014

what-is-a-prayer-vigilWhat is a prayer vigil?

A prayer vigil is a time that is set aside for prayer, where the people who are praying stay up all night for a specific cause. The fact that you give up sleep to commit yourself to pray causes the time spent in prayer to be more intense.

What happens to your body, mind, and spirit during a prayer vigil?

Your body begins to feel tired because you are used to sleeping. You have to fight distracting thoughts in your mind to focus yourself on continuous prayer throughout the night. You realize how undisciplined your mind is when you are fighting just to maintain mind alertness. But the spiritual benefits are worth it. Your spirit is more awake and more focused on the Lord.

How are prayer vigils different from fasting, and yet similar?

If you have ever fasted from food, you know that going without food causes you to feel physically weak and empty. That emptiness causes you to cry out to God and pray in a much more intense way. God says that when we seek Him with ALL our hearts, we will find Him. (Jeremiah 29:13) Often while fasting for a family member or friend going through a crisis, my pounding on the doors of heaven through fasting has caused me to find God in a deeper way.

The weakness I feel during a fast from food is physical, and the weakness I feel during a fast of sleep is also physical. The first is a physical weakness caused by hunger radiating out of the stomach and weakening the whole body. The second is a physical weakness caused by exhaustion and the fight against wanting to fall asleep. The mind then starts shutting down during the prayer vigil, making it harder to pray than during fasting. You are fighting against the flesh and the mind, rather than just the flesh.

The body doesn’t hurt physically during the prayer vigil if you are eating, whereas the body does hurt physically during fasting, however.

If you have gained discipline and mastery over your mind in different areas of mental sin, you will probably find the prayer vigil not as hard as fasting. If you have no mental discipline, a prayer vigil is harder than fasting.

Are prayer vigils Scriptural?

Jesus stayed up praying all night before He chose His disciples:

“It was at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray, and He spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also named as apostles.” Luke 6:12-13 NASB

In the book of Acts, when the early church was devoted to prayer, they were conducting a prayer vigil for Peter, who was in prison. In the middle of the night, an angel let Peter out of prison, and Peter walked through the dark streets until he came to the house where the believers were praying. When he knocked on the door, Rhoda the servant girl couldn’t believe that Peter was standing there! Because of her joy, she didn’t open the door but ran back into the house, and no one believed her that Peter was at the door. Finally after knocking for a long time, the believers let Peter into the house, and they rejoiced. (Acts 12:5-16)

In the instance with Jesus, there was a specific reason for His prayer vigil: the choosing of the disciples. This was a crucial decision, and He wanted to make sure that He was fully submitted to the will of the Father in making this decision.

In the same way, when the early church was going though a crisis with Christians being killed and imprisoned, the church conducted a prayer vigil to pray for Peter to be saved from being put to death. Herod had already put James the brother of John to death with a sword a couple of verses before, and now he intended to deliver Peter to the angry mob. The early church was highly concerned about this situation, deciding to pray all night together, that God would somehow deliver Peter.

Stay tuned for part 2: My First Prayer Vigil

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#14 Saturated Solutions

November 3rd, 2014

saturated-solutions

This post contains affiliate links. I was compensated for my work in writing this post.

Today we will be making saturated solutions. What is a saturated solution? It’s when the water is holding the most of a substance that it possibly can. We will be making a sugar solution and a salt solution, and we will do a fun identification game at the end, to see if we can identify which is salt and which is sugar. We are using Christian Kids Explore Chemistry by Bright Ideas Press, and this experiment will help you to understand saturated solutions.

I labeled the four glasses before doing the experiment. Two were labeled salt and two were labeled sugar. I put the labels on the bottom of the glasses. I used masking tape and permanent marker.

We poured water into each of the four glasses. Then we placed one teaspoon of salt into the water and stirred it. We placed a second teaspoon and a third teaspoon and so on until the water would no longer hold any more salt. At this point, some of the salt will fall to the bottom because the water itself can hold no more salt. The water is now saturated with salt. Do the same to another glass of water.

Using sugar, place the sugar, one teaspoon after another, into the water, stirring the water after each teaspoon. As soon as the water will hold no more sugar, the water is saturated with sugar. IV’s at the hospital are filled with glucose, so what is pumped into your body when you want to faint is similar to this saturated sugar solution.

saturated-solutions-3Once you have two glasses of sugar solution and two glasses of salt solution, have your kids close their eyes. (Blindfold them if they look like they are cheating with one eye open.)

Slide the glasses around, shuffling their order so your kids can’t tell which solution is which. Now have your kids open their eyes, or take off the blindfold. Have the kids try to figure out which solution is which based on smell. Can you do it?

Now try to identify which solution is which by tasting them. The salt water is really strong and will remind you of ocean water crashing over you. The sugar water is certainly easy to identify, too!

You can watch this experiment here:

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