Sometimes I think science likes teasing me. Give me a simple experiment and it won’t work. Take the other week. I turned on the tea kettle and for some reason the flame turned green. A teachable moment! This was very exciting. We talked about what may have caused it to turn green (was it baking soda stuck on the kettle, or the copper bottom burning?) As the green flame started flickering down, I turned off the gas for a moment to preserve the kettle and find a camera to take a picture of the experiment. Once we found the camera, I turned the kettle back on and…

Nothing. Just a plain old blue gas flame. I couldn’t even get the flame to go as high as it did before, let alone figure out how to make it green again. From my comic strip archive, here are other moments when science has mocked me.

Visit Cristina for more teachable moment ideas & wonderful artwork at Home Spun Juggling.