When science fair season and curriculum showcase events are near, a visit to Robert Krampf: The Happy Scientist is in order. You will find a cornucopia of science videos depicting experiments, scientific concepts and oddities of nature that encompass virtually every science discipline. The best part of the experiments is that they use items that are readily on hand in nearly any kitchen.

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Debbie Chikousky is an agricultural columnist that has combined her love of farming with her love of homeschooling. Her writing allows her to be a stay at home farm mom with her four children. Although the two oldest went through public school, their daughter is now a homeschooling high school graduate and the youngest isn’t far behind. Combining homeschooling with a busy day of farm chores and teenage life can be a challenge but it is always fun. She utilizes free tools as much as possible in her endeavors to keep learning connected to life. You can read more about her farm life at Chikousky Farms.

Name of Product: Robert Krampf: The Happy Scientist

Link to Product/website: http://thehappyscientist.com/

Description of Product: “Krampf.com is now TheHappyScientist.com! If you got here through a link to Krampf.com, bookmark this page. The videos, experiments, photo galleries, and blog are now all in one place. The new theme has let me cross reference everything, making it easy for you to find what you are looking for. At the bottom of each section, you will find links, such as “energy”, “challenges”, or “science with food.” Those links will take you to other content in the same category. The links only show content that you have access to, so members will see a LOT more content than non-members.”

Debbie’s Description of Product: At Robert Krampf: The Happy Scientist, you will find a cornucopia of science videos depicting experiments, scientific concepts and oddities of nature that encompass virtually every science discipline. It supplies users with information to help fit the material on the site into the required learning for the school year. The free membership entitles you to many videos and articles along with a free weekly newsletter, which includes a science experiment that can be done at home with kitchen supplies. A lot of the material at Robert Krampf: The Happy Scientist is free but for complete access to All videos and experiments, you need to pay the $20.00 fee (For video viewing: If you are using Internet Explorer 8, be sure that compatibility view is ON.).

Homeschool Uses: When science fair season and curriculum showcase events are fast approaching, a visit to Robert Krampf: The Happy Scientist is certainly in order. The best part of the experiments offered at the website, and in the newsletter, is that they use easily found items that are readily on hand in nearly any kitchen. Although they are simple enough for older students to do on their own with little supervision, they are still interesting enough to engage learning. The videos include key concepts to be taught as well and are located beneath the title. For people with dial up, this is a great time saver because you don’t have to download them, only to discover they aren’t what you need.

Content and Safety: Robert Krampf’s Website Privacy Statement states clearly their safety and privacy features. I did not find anything that would be considered harmful in any way.

Debbie’s Experience Using the Product: The day I signed up for our FREE account, I received the first newsletter. To play with the experiments, my son and I decided to perform the Butter Making Experiment. As promised, the list of supplies were all readily available in my home. We needed a quart of cream, which our cow kindly donated, and a glass jar. Making butter is usually part of our daily chores and we found it fascinating to study the why’s and how’s of butter forming when you warm cream to room temperature and then agitate it. Krampf has a unique way of taking ordinary events in life and making the student “see” science in them.

Doing this experiment answered a lot of questions that we have had about butter making. Questions such as “Why does cream turn to butter faster when it is warm than when it is cold?” For another experiment, we could repeat the process, and using a timer, see just how much faster it actually is. Another question: “Why is butter more yellow at different times of the year?” We know now that is it due to the change in the betacarotene, the precursor to vitamin A, in the cow’s food. Fresh green, spring grass makes more yellow butter than winter hay.

This experiment worked for us, which is very important for children. The experiments that were in our Biology text this year were quite frustrating because a lot of them didn’t work or we didn’t have the right supplies. But when I studied the lists of topics and experiments from this site, there were many that could be used to teach the concepts we were studying, so we will be playing with science a bit more over the next week.

Tutorial or Promotional Video of the Product: This site is full of videos explaining the world we live in. Here is the video of Making Butter:

Summary: If there is a way to make science even more fun, than naturally the Robert Krampf: The Happy Scientist website achieves it. All of the material here is highly usable by any grade. I found his love for science to be infectious on the videos we watched and the experiments we explored.

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