Summer of Science

Summer is coming, preschool is coming to an end for my nearly 5 year old, and I want to continue her learning and take advantage of the extra time I can have with her, when she won't have all her activities going on. I'm thinking a bunch of science experiments could be a lot of fun.
Right now I'm thinking of:

• Diet-Coke/Mentos explosion thing
• Dissolving a nail in coke
• Making crystals on a string out of salt
• Making a terrarium in a soda bottle
• Making an electromagnet (credits to my friend for that idea)

My wife just so happened to teach our daughter the word hypothesis recently, so I think we're off to a good start. We'll keep a notebook, find plans, explanations and videos on the Internet, and find relevant books at the library.

Already a recent visit to a park revealed an aphid infested tree covered with lady bugs, including a pupae, all of which we had seen in a book we took out of the library. Exciting stuff.

Japanese Suicide

Japan has long had a close relationship with suicide, both historically and in modern times. Reasons are thought to be honor and pressure, and as increasingly it's becoming apparent, as one person quoted in one of the articles below, it's not forbidden by law or religion in Japan. Things are going to a disturbing extreme, with people organizing and encouraging each other over the Internet, and finding easy, relatively non gruesome and painful ways to end their own lives.
Japan Detergent Suicide
Japanese Internet Suicide Clubs