The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [45]
You can forgo expensive non-eco-friendly store-bought cleaners for our two wonder products instead.
Before you start washing, sprinkle baking soda through the car’s interior to remove odors. Vacuum it up when the outside washing is done.
For the car body, grab a bucket, and pour in ½ cup of vinegar for every gallon of water; scrub car with a big sponge.
For windows, mirrors, and interior plastic, mix 2 cups of water and ½ cup vinegar in an empty spray bottle. You can add up to ¼ cup of rubbing alcohol and, to make it look fancier, one drop each, no more, of blue and green food coloring. Instead of rags, use newspapers to clean and shine windows.
VOLCANO PROJECT
In an old soda bottle, pour a little more than a ½ cup of vinegar, and a little more than a ½ cup of dishwashing liquid. Add red food coloring, if you wish, for a lava effect.
Make a foundation from a piece of cardboard. Stick the bottle onto that with tape. Then build up a volcano around it. Mound up old newspapers, leaves, or whatever material you have on hand. Once it attains a mountain shape, cover the whole thing with a large sheet of foil, crimping it a bit so it looks volcano-like.
For the eruption, measure 1 heaping tablespoon of baking soda. Wrap it in a small piece of paper towel or pour it straight in. Either way, when you deposit the baking soda, the concoction will erupt before your eyes. It’s very second grade, but always fun, no matter what your age.
Here’s the chemistry behind the volcano: vinegar is acidic acid, baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, a base. When they react together they produce carbonic acid, and that decomposes very quickly into water and carbon dioxide. The foaming bubble explosion is the carbon dioxide gas escaping.
Rules of the Game: Bowling
IN THE 1930s, a British archeologist named Sir Flinders Petrie discovered items in an Egyptian grave that appeared to have been used in an ancient version of the game we know today as bowling. By his estimation, bowling is a 5,000-year-old game. In the Middle Ages in Britain, bowling was so popular—and distracting—that King Edward III was said to have outlawed it, so that his troops could keep focused on honing their archery skills for battle. Bowling’s first mention in American literature was by Washington Irving: his Rip Van Winkle is awakened by the sound of “crashing ninepins.” In 1895, Americans established the American Bowling Congress to regulate the rules of the game and establish national bowling competitions. They forgot to include women, however, so in 1917 women bowlers rectified that by forming the Women’s National Bowling Association. Today bowlers all over the world compete and play for fun with friends. Here are some rules for playing and scoring the game.
HOW TO KEEP SCORE
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There are ten frames in the game, and each bowler is given up to two opportunities to try to knock down all ten bowling pins in each frame. The object of the game is to have the highest score. The pins knocked down on a player’s first attempt are counted and recorded on a score sheet. (The score sheet has a place for each players name, and next to that ten boxes, one for each frame of the game. At the top of each box are two squares, which is where the scores for each of the two balls thrown per frame are recorded. At the far right is a larger box, which is where the total score for all ten frames should go.) If there are still pins left standing, the bowler then has a second try at knocking them down, and the number of pins knocked down on her second try is recorded. Her score is the pins from the first roll, plus the pins from the second roll; the resulting amount is then added to any previous score. Scores continue to accumulate as each bowler takes her turn until all ten frames have been played by each of the bowlers.
BONUS SCORING
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When a bowler rolls a strike or a spare, she gets bonus points. Both a spare and a strike are worth 10 pins, but how they are scored actually depends on what the bowler does in the next frame. With a spare, marked by a