Our food has vitamins, minerals, and nutrients that we need to survive and be healthy. Did you know that one of those things is iron? Turns out, iron is a metal and our scientist this week wanted to test if it was magnetic. The cereal Total has the highest concentration of iron of any breakfast cereal, so we used that. All you have to do is place the cereal in some water and hover a magnet over the flakes. Be gentle with your movements, but you'll see you're able to move the cereal around the water with the magnet. Now we're wondering what our body does with iron and why it's so essential.

Crested Butte's history is fascinating and we're so glad we got to learn from the fine folks at the museum. Today we gathered ideas for curating our very own mining town museum. We created mini exhibits about interesting objects found around the museum. We got to make up the object's story as long as our exhibit included artifacts, photographs, captions, a timeline, a title, and a paragraph. We're excited to some research tomorrow with a fresh perspective on what dates, details, and stories to look for. 
Thank you to the museum for helping us!

Platypus on Brink of Extinction
Science Daily

Today our reporter taught us about the platypus and it's unfortunate state of affairs.  Unfortunately, the drought, climate change and land use in Australia have had a big impact on the platypus.  The lack of fresh water sources and land leaves the animal stranded and searching for a home.  Australia is trying to create a plan for dealing with this disaster before the monotreme (a mammal that lays eggs) becomes extinct.  This would be especially bad news, since platypus are only found on the continent of Australia.

 The Sweet Danger of Health
Harvard Health Publishing

This week we learned about the danger of sugar. We always knew too much sugar was not great, but we didn't really know the details or the numbers. Our reporter showed us that kids our age probably only need 25g of sugar a day (natural sugar not added sugar). Good sources of natural sugar are fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Added sugars include white/brown sugar, honey, molasses, syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, and any other mysterious ingredient ending in -ose. Studies show that too much sugar can lead to chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers. We learned how to read the nutrition facts on our snacks and that everything in moderation is really the way to go. So...Valentine's Day is not totally ruined!

This weeks reporter came to us with some very local news. You may have seen the most recent Red Lady slide on skiers left of the bowl.  Turns out a solo skier set the slide off early last Sunday.  Luckily, someone watching from the comfort of their couch witnessed the slide and called it into Mountain Rescue. The skier escaped, found one ski, and skied away! Lessons learned...don't go into the backcountry alone! Stick to the low angle pow when conditions are sketchy! We're so glad that everyone is OK!

Today our scientist showed us the magic powers of sugar and yeast and we had a quick chemistry lesson. When yeast is mixed with sugar in a liquid, the yeast (a living organism) becomes activated. It eats the sugar and essentially burps out carbon dioxide. It's a much slower reaction than we're used to with baking soda and vinegar, but it's neat to be able to watch it happen in slow motion. With the creation of carbon dioxide, the pressure in the bottle increases and the balloon fills. It's like watching bread rise!  Check out the video below for the details.

Today we learned how to safely search the internet (mainly Google) for information on our mining towns. We talked about finding quality sources, useful information, and how to search Google effectively. We also learned how to cite sources for websites and books. It's important to give credit for information and photographs that are not our own!