Science Fair

Today I was given the opportunity to judge the science fair.

This is one of those experiences that should be written down on every one's "list of things I need to do before I die." When I signed up to judge the science fair, I was mainly doing it to avoid being stuck on crowd control and being forced to supervise students running around school - little did I know how awesome it was going to be. Right before heading out to set up projects, my friend Ben Manting (who I also share my classroom with at school) just had to bring up Brian Regan "Stupid in School".......needless to say, the rest of the afternoon I spent laughing to myself as Brian's voice ran through my head saying, "The big yellow one's the SUN!" and "It's a cup of dirt. Just put an 'F' on it and let me go home!" (I'm not sure if anyone outside of my family will get this, but that's ok).

As part of being a science fair judge I was given the chance to see some pretty cool projects. Unfortunately, none will stand out as clearly in my mind as the ice cream project. The ice cream project rocked my world. I have to be honest, I don't even really remember what the whole point of the project was, all I can remember is 2 girls standing before my co-judge/friend Matt and I saying, "We are going to make ice cream out of liquid nitrogen and you are going to eat it." .........um, what did they just say?!


To get the gist of it, in a metal bowl the girls put milk, 2 eggs, whipped cream, sugar, chocolate syrup, and then mixed it all together. They then pulled out a thermos emitting white plumes of smoke, telling us they were about to add the liquid nitrogen. As they poured the nitrogen into the mixture, the clouds of fog grew larger and the concoction began to bubble and fizzle. Bits of nitrogen flew out of the bowl amidst the wisking and created a burning/freezing sensation on our feet. After it was all mixed together, the ice cream was frozen.

We were then handed cups of ice cream and told to try it. At first I couldn't get over the fact that it was FULL of this extremely intense liquid and I was about to put it in my stomach, but curiousity won the battle and between Matt and I, we just about finished the entire bowl of ice cream - it tasted so good!


Apparently in Honduras, anyone at any time can walk in and buy liquid nitrogen. Crazy! And yet, this is part of the reason I love Honduras so much! I'm pretty sure they had a very good reason for taking it off public shelves in the States, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it while I am here.......just didn't know enjoying it included eating it!