List a favourite science experiment!

[kathymuggle]

here is a cool one:

Get a pop can. Clean it.

Add one (generous) teaspoon of water - heat it over to stove element.

Once the water has boiled for about 1 minute (I guessed - once the steam had been pouring out for one minute) quickly grab can with tongs and flip the can over and plunge into cold water. The can will make a loud pop noise and implode - very cool!

[nathansmum]

We still get a buzz from the milk and dishwash liquid one (with food colouring drops added).

Fill a saucer or flat dish with a thin layer of milk, add a drop of food colour in several places (2 colours are cool). Then add a drop of dishwash liquid either by dripping it in directly, or by applying on the end of a toothpick and watch the food colour race around the saucer on its own. The dishwash liquid breaks down the fat molecules and the surface tension and allows the colour to move through the milk.

[*Lisa*]

Open a 2 liter bottle of soda, insert mentos (do this one outside for sure)! This fall we've been experimenting with the best type of soda and the best number of mentos. Very fun!

[Jennifer3141]

The kids LOVED the old celery in the dyed water trick this week.

You take a glass of water and then add some food coloring - red is cool!

Then you add a celery stalk. In just a few minutes, you can see the red going into the edges but in a couple of hours, the celery will be all red.

[kathymuggle]

Originally Posted by *Lisa*

Open a 2 liter bottle of soda, insert mentos (do this one outside for sure)! This fall we've been experimenting with the best type of soda and the best number of mentos. Very fun!

Along the same vein is vinegar and baking soda - but the best place to do the experiment is an old dish soap bottle. Mix up the ingrediants quickly in the dish soap bottle with the lid closed, allow the pressure to build slightly in the bottle, then pull the top of the lid up - the spray is 20 feet high! Do outside

[moominmamma]

Four ziploc bags, ice, salt and some pudding.

Put a couple of cups of ice in one ziploc bag.
Put a couple of cups of ice and a quarter cup of salt in another ziploc bag.

Put 1 1/2 cups of pudding in each of the other two bags.

Seal the pudding bags and enclose one in each of the ice bags. Now you have, on the one hand, pudding bag inside ice bag and on the other hand pudding bag inside ice & salt bag.

Toss, and gently knead both bags for 10 minutes or so.

The pudding in the ice/salt bag will become ice cream because salt lowers the freezing point of water low enough to freeze the pudding. The other one will still be pudding. Now eat and enjoy!

You can use any ice cream custard base instead of pudding but pudding is the pre-fab easy way.

Miranda

[kathymuggle]

Originally Posted by moominmamma

The pudding in the ice/salt bag will become ice cream because salt lowers the freezing point of water low enough to freeze the pudding. The other one will still be pudding. Now eat and enjoy!

Miranda

So that is why my home-made ice cream (usually using cans) does not turn out! I have skipped the salt thinking it was unnecessary

[PJsmomma]

We put a chicken bone in vinegar for 3 days. My son observed it before and after.
Very interesting.
We currently have a baby tooth in a cup of soda;0!

One of our favorites was to understand why blubber keeps whales warm.

We put our hands in ice water and timed how long we could hold our hand in the water--not long!

Then we put on a glove and packed shortening around the glove and added another glove--or plastic wrap. Then we put our hand in the ice water.
World of difference!

[Attila the Honey]

this one doesn't explode or anything, but it helped dd (and I) understand how bones turn into fossils. We saw it on Bill Nye and tried it ourselves.

Take a kitchen sponge and cut into a bone shape. Put in a large bowl and cover with dirt. Pour very salty water into the bowl, I think we used a cup of salt to 2 C of warm water. Put the bowl in a sunny window for a couple of days and when the dirt dries and hardens chip it away and remove the "bone". The salt crystals will have filled the holes in the sponge and hardened, much like minerals fill bones and turn them to rock.

[jlpumkin]

Attila we are so going to try the fossil one!!

To show gas expanding when heated:

fit an empty balloon over a glass bottle
Heat a pan of water to boiling on range
Place bottle in boiling water - heated air will expand inflating balloon

We finished and were in a hurry so just left it all on the stove to cool when we returned home. Kids got a kick out of the balloon not only deflated but inverted into the bottle when it was cool.

[beanma]

google "elephant toothpaste". very fun and dramatic. you can do a kid safe version w/ drug store hydrogen peroxide and yeast dishsoap anf food coloring for added pizzazz.

[AAK]

We liked squishing bananas

This was fun. It was our favorite experiment from last year's science curriculum.

you will need a plank, a toy car, some pennies, a banana, some cardboard, a thumbtack, and some books.

Slice the banana. Attach with thumb tack, one slice of banana to the cardboard. Take plank and set it up so that it is at a slight incline--the downward end should be positioned so that the toy car will run into the banana. Now, let the car go down the ramp and crash into the banana. Take note of banana status. If you need to change out the slice before the next run, go ahead. After each run, increase incline of plank with the books.

You can make a chart that has height of incline down a column and whether or not the slice of banana gets squished.
Then, once you are able to squish the banana, start over. This time, though add weight (with the pennies) to the car.

It is a great experiment to see how weight (changed with pennies) and speed (changed by adjusting the incline) affect the force of the car.

Amy

eta: I had the cardboard against the wall to receive the force of the car.