Experiment #2 Amazing Egg Experiments
Squeeze an egg as hard as you can without breaking it. Learn how to tell a raw egg from a hardboiled egg without cracking the shell. Perform the amazing floating egg trick. It’s Egg Olympics in your very own kitchen!
Experiment #4 Deck the Halls with Science
You are decorating your home; why not add a little science while trimming the tree? We have several homemade Christmas decorating ideas and Christmas crafts to do. Your house will be sparkling and glowing with holiday decorations this year.
Experiment #5 GAK – Elmer’s Glue Borax Receipt
Is it a solid? Is it a liquid? Just what is this slimy, stringy, rubbery stuff? This variation on slime will probably remind you of a similar substance found in many toy stores. This is the most popular version of “slime” among teachers because it’s so easy to make and serves as a great visual tool for introducing students to the properties of polymers.
Experiment #7 – Mentos Diet Coke Geyser
Who would have ever guessed that dropping MENTOS® chewy mints into a bottle of soda would produce such a viral reaction? Steve Spangler describes the reaction as “this generation’s reaction to vinegar and baking soda.” The reaction – a giant eruption of soda – is as mysterious as it is sensational. Although the phenomenon of dropping candy and mints into soda to release the carbonation has been around for years.
Experiment #10 – Eye Dropper Cartesian Diver
Is it mind control or just a clever science trick? It’s a classic science experiment using an eye-dropper, a soda bottle filled with water, and some great showmanship. Explore the science of Cartesian divers while amazing your friends with your telekinetic powers. Yeah, right!
Experiment #12 – CD Hovercraft
We used to think that building our own hovercraft was going to take a couple of trips to NASA. We quickly realized that it was a little iffy having jet engines and ultra-lightweight material anywhere near Steve. We had to develop our own design using everyday materials, and that’s exactly what we did. Using a CD, a balloon, and a few other household items you can create a working hovercraft, too!
Experiment #14 – Flying Tea Rocket
The Tea Bag Rocket is really an adaptation of a classic science demonstration called the Ditto Paper Rocket. If you’re old enough to have experienced Ditto paper, you’ll recall the bluish-purple ink and that unforgettable smell of freshly printed copies. (Come to find out… both the Ditto machine solvent and the ink were highly toxic, but no one seemed to care back then.) Each piece of Ditto paper had a sheet of tissue paper that separated the two-part form, and it was this discarded piece of paper that teachers and kids used to make Ditto paper “rockets.” Since Ditto paper is a thing of the past, science enthusiasts have found a simple replacement – a tea bag.
Experiment #16 – Pop Rocks Science
Pop Rocks are known as the exploding candy, and if you ate Pop Rocks as a kid, you probably remember the legend… if you eat Pop Rocks and then drink a soda, you’ll explode. The Food and Drug Administration even set up a telephone hotline to assure anxious parents that the popping candy would not cause children to explode. While you can mark this one up as urban legend (in other words, it’s not true), there is some interesting science behind the world famous popping candy.
Experiment #17 – Light Sticks – Liquid Light
Just give the plastic light stick a little “snap” and a shake and the liquid inside begins to glow. Some people call it liquid light. Our experience tells us that with light comes heat… but not this time. Light sticks are more popular than ever and have become almost required apparel for Halloween to cast an eerie glow on the candy seekers. Light sticks are also a great and inexpensive teaching tool for students to learn how temperature affects the rate of the chemical reaction.
Experiment #18 – Alka Seltzer Film Canister Rocket
What happens when you have a build-up of gas? Don’t answer that question! The gas in question is carbon dioxide and the explosion is nothing short of fun. Warning: It’s impossible to do this activity just once. It is addicting and habit-forming. Proceed at your own risk!
Experiment #20 – Baby Diaper Secret
If you’ve ever changed a diaper and noticed what looked like tiny crystals on the baby’s skin, you’ve uncovered the secret of superabsorbent, disposable diapers. Those tiny crystals actually come from the lining of the diaper and are made out of a safe, non-toxic polymer that absorbs moisture away from the baby’s skin.
Experiment #21 – Chemical Magic
Experiment #21 – Chemical Magic
Some of the earliest recorded “magic” was actually nothing more than a few simple science experiments using chemistry. Just imagine how amazed your friends would be if you could change crystal clear water into grape juice… and then into lemonade. Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone that it’s not really grape juice or lemonade. It’s chemical magic and the ingredients are in your kitchen.
Experiment #23 – Bubbling Density Concoction
This experiment was featured on KUSA-TV in May of 2005 and presented by a group of young scientists from Burlington Elementary in Colorado. The bubbling concoction is a clever mixture of lessons in density and chemistry.
Experiment #27 – Eating Nails for Breakfast
The next time you’re eating a big bowl of breakfast cereal, take a closer look at the ingredients. You’ll find that your cereal contains more than just wheat and corn. Look closely and you might find iron… you know, the metal… the stuff used to make nails. Here’s an experiment to see if there really is metallic iron in your breakfast cereal.
Experiment #28 – Berry pH Paper
No longer must you search for specialty litmus paper. Here at Steve Spangler Science, we’ve come up with a formula that will allow you to create your own acid and base detecting litmus paper using little more than a bit of fruit.
Experiment #30 – The Coin Drop
Dropping a coin into an empty glass sounds pretty ordinary at first. In fact, we tend to stray towards the extraordinary. We had some amazing ideas, from throwing the penny off a wall and into the cup to melting the penny into the glass, but our custodian, Rusty Shackleford, won the contest with his amazing demonstration of Newton’s Law of Inertia.