Many of the mishaps in folktales could be remedied if the protagonists knew some scientific principles.
STEM books and activities for fun
I’m still working on the lemon juice secret message project. Many children don’t know how to iron. Their first experience should be supervised, and the children in my story are not supervised when the find the lemon juice message. So my husband’s co-worker, Yuanyuan, suggested a 400 degree oven. After a few jokes about not setting the oven at 451 degrees Fahrenheit, we tried it. Her oven’s 400 degrees is hotter than mine. Her message was readable in 5 minutes. At 5 minutes, mine was just starting to appear. I had to wait 10 minutes to fully read my secret message. Here’s photographic evidence from my kitchen. The photo above is after 10 minutes. The photo below is after 5 minutes. The photo below shows the paper on a cookie sheet in my oven. The photo above shows the same paper out of the oven. Yes, that makes it easier to read. This in what it looked like after 5 minutes in my oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit. This is the writing when it is still wet. Parts of some of the letters have started to dry, becoming invisible. This is the first step. Cut the lemon in half, and juice it. I do recommend a juicer, like the one in the picture. It's much easier than squeezing by hand.
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How to Reveal Lemon Juice Secret Messages in the 21st CenturyIf you write a message on paper using lemon juice for ink, it will be invisible when it dries.
The standard method to reveal and read the secret message was to hold the paper against a light bulb. But that was an incandescent light bulb. These days we all have LED bulbs. LED bulbs are cool to the touch. They won’t reveal secret lemon juice messages. I’m writing a story in which the kids find a 100-year-old lemon juice secret message and they want to read it. Yes, they could use a candle or a stove burner, but I want the kids in my story to use a method that would be safe for my 10-year-old readers to use. So, I can’t have them playing with fire. I tried a heating pad. Even when I set the heating pad on its hottest setting, lemon juice ink remains invisible. I don’t use a hair-dryer, so my friend Jean tried it at her house. Again, the message couldn’t be read. Yes, it is still possible to buy incandescent bulbs, if you buy the new shatter-proof ROUGH model. They cost about $4 each. But I didn’t want the kids in my story or my readers to have to go out and buy something. I wanted them to use something they could find around a typical home. So, I tried my iron. To be honest, I buy no-wrinkle clothes and I haven’t used that iron in years, so maybe the settings aren’t accurate. But I tried it. I had to move the heat setting up to 6. (It goes to 8) before the lemon juice message became visible. I was using an iron when I was 10 years old. But do modern kids? After all, modern playgrounds don’t have jungle gyms or teeter-totters. They don’t have gravel that can skin kids’ knees. I checked on the Internet. I found one parenting blog that talked about ironing. This blog suggested that children as young as 8-years-old could be taught to iron simple things like pillow cases. A secret message is even simpler than a pillow case. Therefore, the kids in my story will use an iron to reveal the secret message. I’ll have the boy who helps his mother run the souvenir shop in town be the one who knows how to use it. |
Lois Wickstrom
former head science teacher at Science in the City Summer Camp. Now writing STEM fiction and non-fiction Archives
March 2022
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