Winter Fun--Do try this at home.

Here in the East, we have had a day of snow with more falling. Many businesses have been closed as well as all of the schools. While I was looking for gloves to wear for the shoveling, I remembered a science project Theo did when he was ten.

It was one he thought up on his own and it was just right for a boy his age. His question was, "Which gloves will stay dry for the longest time while playing in the snow?" He conducted his experiment by gathering up all of the gloves in the house and making snowballs with them until his hands got wet. He used gloves made from seven different materials. The worst pair got wet after 16 snowballs and the best pair got wet after 90+ snowballs. (He stopped counting after 90.) See if you can guess which pair performed the best and which pair performed the worst.

He had gloves made from:

Deerskin
Deerskin with knit lining
Polar fleece with no lining
Polar fleece with polyester lining
Acrylic gray knit
Acrylic brown knit
Acrylic knit with leather grip

He thought the leather gloves would perform the best, but they turned out to get wet the fastest. The acrylic knit gloves did the best even though they were thinner than the polar fleece. The polar fleece were about half-way in-between the leather and acrylic knit gloves.

Now while this experiment and its results were interesting, that was not the best part according to Theo. The best part was the snowball fight he had at the end with his brother. I do encourage you to try this at home.