Gary Davis at Homeschool Buzz found some weird and wonderful items at Amazon.  I want the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank, along with colored cement floors with a drain in the middle of each room.  Hose ‘er down.

The March 2nd edition of the Carnival of Homeschooling is up.

Speaking of oddities that homeschoolers could love, I received an email from Jeffrey - an ASPEX company (Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM) and Microanalysis software) representative.  They just kicked off a "Send Us Your Sample" campaign, allowing anyone to mail an object of their choosing and have it scanned for free under one of their Scanning Electron Microscopes.  That sounds like great fun.  From Jeffrey:

People can send us a piece of clothing, an old toothbrush, or even a dead insect…anything they want to see a picture of under a powerful microscope. I am sure that you will find some crazy things on a farm.  Once we receive the samples, we’ll notify senders of their results via email. You can view other reports we’ve done here: http://www.aspexcorp.com/resources/send_sample.html

Speaking of cool views, the annual University of IL Engineering Open House opens up their labs and experimentation for all interested parties, including families. And the imaging microscopes at the Beckman Institute are fascinating and innovative - Credit for the image to the right is attributed to Janet Sinn-Hanlon and the Imaging Technology Group, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. pssst…Don’t send your foot to the folks at ASPEX.  It needs to fit neatly in an envelope.

Also at the Engineering Open House, Engineers Without Borders are offering a cool hands on project: .

Nearly 1 billion people across the globe lack access to clean water. Technology to change that exists today. This exhibit will demonstrate different technologies to filter water and test its purity. Children will be able to make their own water filters out of sand, cotton wool and pebbles, and then disinfect the resulting water with UV. Different computer-connected test probes and a microscope will allow visitors to perform tests to gauge the cleanliness of filtered and disinfected water, as well as tap water and water from local streams. Finally, we will have a 3-D working model of a borewell, solar pumping station and water distribution system, similar to a system implemented by an EWB Project in Enugu, Nigeria. 

Great mission work the Engineers Without Borders are performing.  I know many churches also contribute to creating life sustaining and available water sources around the world.  With that, it seems like a good time to sign off.   By the way, I suspect many universities and colleges around the country are having open houses for their various departments around now.  See if the Ag College has one, there’s nothing better than milking a cow.