Oceanography is given a playful spin with Message in a Bottle, a kit that will appeal to science geeks who still appreciate the art of sending and receiving handwritten letters on fancy stationary via snail mail.
The kit’s recycled glass bottle can be tracked by registering it at the official Message in a Bottle website. Mark your location on the enclosed laminated map with the included waterproof pen, then turn the map over and fill in the logbook with your bottle’s registered name and launch data. A greeting message, saying hello in several languages, is printed on this page along with an URL, so when someone discovers your bottle they can look it up at wheresmybottle.com and let you know where it washed to shore. The finder then adds their location to your map and updates the logbook before sending the bottle on its way again.
Part of the fun of sending a message in a bottle is personalizing the contents. A small memento representing your hometown makes your bottled message more meaningful to its recipients, as will something that reflects your personality and interests. Write your message in the form of a poem, paste a photobooth picture of yourself to the inside of the bottle or, if you’re a sci-fi fan, incorporate the Vulcan IDIC symbol to spread some universal peace. You’ll have a greater chance of a response if your bottle is easy to spot in the water, so decorate with lots of bright colours. Filling the bottle with neon pink and orange pom-pons, or shiny items that reflect the sun, is sure to attract attention. Once you’re done, pop the cork into the bottle, seal it with wax, and toss it into a current that will carry it out to sea.
While waiting for a reply, learn more about the conditions your bottle will be experiencing by reading the kit’s accompanying Message in a Bottle book. This 71-page pocket guide details the history of how people have used and studied water over the ages, shares real-life stories of message bottles, and offers a few other water experiments to try. Philip Richardson, a leading oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, contributes explanations of currents, tides, and water-related weather in understandable scientific terms, and offers tips for a successful bottle launch. He also suggests ways to help raise environmental issues and conserve the world’s watery ecosystems. If the aliens of V are willing to travel across the universe to try to steal Earth’s water supply, then it’s surely a resource worth protecting.
If you prefer a little more paranormal in your science, then a close encounter with the My Crop Circle kit will really set off your PKE meter.
Create Your Own Natural Phenomenons
Plant It. Water It. Witness It.
My Crop Circle works much like a Chia Pet. You just moisten the dirt-free mat of “alien growing matter”, place it in the desktop growing tray, and evenly sprinkle the packet of grass seed over the surface. Wait a few days for the grass to sprout (while remembering to keep watering daily), then press one of the five included crop circle templates onto the growth. In addition to providing entertaining information on the history, science, and pop culture relevance of crop circles, the 64-page Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Crop Circles guide book has several photos that you can copy patterns from instead, or you can get creative and design your own extraterrestrial templates. Let the grass grow up around the template’s edges, then remove the stencil to reveal your very own miniature crop circle. “…You can be first in your office to cause a controversy, garner widespread curiosity, and freak out your colleagues just a little bit.”
Recommended Reading Level: Ages 10 and older.
Order now at Amazon.com:
Message in a Bottle
My Crop Circle
Message in a Bottle and My Crop Circle are distributed by Applesauce Press and Cider Mill Press Book Publishers, independent publishers distributed by Simon & Schuster.