CHEMISTRY
Hot, Cold, Fizzy, and Colorful: Students discover that common chemicals can create a wide variety of results when they are mixed in a certain way.
Shrinking Plastic: Students discover that certain plastics will shrink dramatically upon heating. They then make an ornament on a container of clear plastic and shrink it to show how some areas shrink more than others.
Kitchen Chemistry: Students mix up a corn starch goop that acts both as a solid and a liquid. They compare it to rubber made from white glue and Boraxo.
Dry Ice: Students discover how to make a hollow ice egg, how soap bubbles can float in mid air, how to make fog, and how to make eerie noises.
Smoke Rings: Students discover a way to make a puff of air travel across the classroom with amazing efficiency. We then use stage fog to create smoke rings of many sizes.
Calcium Carbide: It looks like an ordinary rock, but some say that it smells like garlic. When it touches water it fizzes and, with a bit of luck, it can be used to blow the top off of a plastic cup.
Candle-in-a-Jar: We dispel the myth that a candle consumes oxygen and produces no other gases. The students learn about the source for the Greenhouse Effect as they discover the properties relating to birthday candles.
Soda Pop Fountains (with Mentos): Students discover which combination of soda, initiator, and temperature create the highest fountain. Some of the bottles shoot soda above the two-story building.
Exploding Film Cans: Students discover how an automobile engine mixes fuel and air to produce motion. A tiny amount of butane is used to discover the effects of too much or too little oxygen in the combustion chamber.
LIGHT
Lasers and Mirrors: Students use their reflections in plastic mirrors to discover how to make a million eyes, an infinite ‘tunnel’, periscopes, kaleidoscopes, and how the ‘fun house’ mirrors work. A laser is used to show the light path.
Giant Magnifying Lens: On a clear day we experiment with the sun’s energy. Students don protective eyewear and we place many types of material at the focal point to see what happens. On a hot summer day, it can melt a penny in 30 seconds.
ELECTRICITY
Static Electricity: Students learn about thunder, lightning, and electrons. They discover how to separate a mixture of salt and pepper, lightning safety, and with one hair-raising experience, they discover the nature of static electricity.
An Electrifying Experience: Students discover what happens when colored light bulbs are hooked up in series and in parallel. They also check a wide variety of materials to see if they are conductors.
Electrical Generators: Students provide the power to activate lights, motors, bells, and fans. In the process they will develop an appreciation of how much energy is needed to run ordinary electrical devices.
Exploding Bubbles: Students discover what happens when electricity passes through water. We then let them combine the resulting hydrogen and oxygen back into water with a loud bang!
Tesla Coil: This device creates continuous streamers of purple lightning over 6 feet across, accompanied by staccato thunder. Students create faces on soda bottles and attempt to get streamers coming out of the eyes and hair before it melts and burns up.
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Bubbles explode in a student's hand |
MAGNETISM
Magnetic Creatures: Students discover all the weird things that magnets can do. Students make their own alien creature that moves magnetically through the habitat they create.
Electromagnets: Students wind an electromagnet and glue it to a cup along with a magnet to make a speaker.
SIMPLE MACHINES
Catapults: Students discover the best way to launch fuzz balls with a catapult that converts mechanical energy into kinetic energy.
Gyroscopes: Students discover how the gyroscopic effect can help them steer a bicycle. Then they make a gyroscopic top and try to make it spin as long as possible.
Roller Coasters: Students work in groups to make a roller coaster with split foam tubes, marbles, and tape. They discover amazing ways to get as many energy conversions as possible.
FLIGHT
Gigantic Bubbles: Students try making bubbles in their hands, on the tabletop, and outdoors. We also create a bubble tube large enough for a student to stand inside.
Water Bottle Rockets: Students launch water bottles with bicycle pumps and discover how to make them go higher and farther by adding weight! This experiment demonstrates Newton’s laws of motion in a way that they will not forget.
Balloon Rockets: Students launch long balloons and try different curvatures to see how the flight is affected.
 
Soda bottle face shoots out streamers of lightning when placed on the Tesla Coil. |
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