Yeah, i woke up early this morning @ 7, changed, and went to meet YK, who was buying the vinegar and Baking Soda.
But unfortunately NTUC was out of Baking soda =.=" so we did our flame experiment as they were available @ the mama shop near KJSS.
Who knows, the Science Centre actually provided Ethanol =.="
Well, after we bought the stuff, we went back to YK's house and i showed him a pepper and water trick.
Well you can do it yourself and see what happens too.
Heres how to do it:
1. Get a Saucer (or a small plate)
2.Fill the plate partially with water.
3. Sprinkle pepper on the water surface of the plate such that it's enough to make a layer on the water.
4. Place your finger at the center of the saucer, nothing happens right?
5. Now smear your finger with dishwashing soap/whatever soap will do and with that finger, place it on the center of the saucepan.
6. Watch what happens!

Eh yeah thats it, the effect is caused by surface tension and physics stuff.
I'm not gonna say what will happen, just try it yourself and you'll know what happens lol.

Well, so let me continue, we made our way to the science center and gathered at the room, afterwards a short talk by Theodora about Communicating skills, who flown from Austrailia just to be an MC for the event.
Then a briefing by Ling Zhi about the criteria and tips/advice for our busking round.
Then we had lunch.
There was this group of Poly guys, yeah they are from Poly, about 8 of them.
They did not qualify for the round but they still came for the crucible.
And they are really childish.
They took the "Sticker" we used to write our name and stick to our chest for identification and they sticked it on my back and some other smaller kid's back.
Very childish eh?
lol.
The contestants were all from good schools/ universities and it was rather pressurising to think that we, from a mere school like KJSS are competing with them.
Theres even a senior teacher taking part.
These contestants come from schools like River Valley High, National University of Singapore, some primary school "kids" and a group of boys from Raffles Institution also.

Well, after lunch it was the time for us contestants to perform a small demonstration for the other contestants to view and comment.
First was the Primary school group, they performed some experiment of corroding styrofoam and the " Elephant Toothpaste" .
It's not really toothpaste but its a reaction between Hydrogen Peroxide and some catalyst, with added soap, which causes a flow of what looks resembles toothpaste.
It looks like you squeezing toothpaste out from the tube lol.
Then after that were some interesting performances, and then it was our turn.

We first tried to perform the fire demonstration, which was actually to "burn" a piece of gauze without burning it.
Yeah, sounds weird but just adding water to ethanol will produce this effect.
So we added 70% Water and 30% Ethanol for the solution.
It was a bad choice, we should'v put more than 50%.
And also, we didnt test whether the soution would work, cos YK said i was being paranoid, so we didnt "rehearse".
Well it was a bad choice to not rehearse, but whats over is ovr.
We did the experiment, soaking the gauze in the solution, and lighted it.
It didnt light at all, because there was too much water yeah.
So yeah it was epic fail.
We had no chocie but to skip to the Water and Pepper trick.
Just as we were preparing, adding pepper to the water, this girl in Yellow ( you can identify her in the last pic in the next post, she's the one bending down.) she was from NUS said this " Yeah its the tension experiment ah." she said it quite loud, and it kinda spoilt the mood =.="
To make matters worse, this primary school guy right in front of the table wearing white lab clothes in the 2nd last pic, asked me what the green substance in the beaker which was soap, for.
Yeah we wanted to show them the magic first before explaining to the people so we kinda hid the beaker behind some plastic bag but he saw it.
Well i had no choice but to say it was soap.
So it totaly spoiled our whole presentation.
Like wtf fail.
But at least, it ws better then the one we did in the audition round =.="
Well, by the way, we will be busking @ Science Centre for the Semi Finals @ 9-11 January from 10am-12PM everyday, if you are free then, please come down to support me and my team lol.
Further details will be posted in the future in this blog.
Well, thats all then, im going for now, bye.