How to Do a Science Project With Stuff in the House
Whether you're trying to put together a last-minute science demonstration, or looking for ways to interest your children in science, simple at-home science projects are indispensable. By knowing a few simple tricks, you'll be able to toss together exciting demonstrations of chemistry, physics and biology without expensive or hard-to-find ingredients. Most of the time, the furthest you need to look is your cupboard.
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Things You'll Need
- Glass fruit-drink bottle
- Hardboiled egg
- Match
- Small strip of newspaper
- Quarter-cup oil
- Quarter-cup water
- Food coloring
- Small glass
- Clear soda
- Tall glass
- Raisins
- Quarter-cup cornstarch
- Bowl
- Paper-towel
Instructions
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Fit an egg into a glass bottle. You can demonstrate the power of air pressure with a few simple steps. Place a hardboiled egg, without the shell, on top of a clean, empty glass bottle. The egg should be larger than the mouth of the bottle so that it cannot freely slide into the bottle. Light the strip of newspaper with the match, lift the egg, drop the burning piece of newspaper into the bottle, and place the egg back in the mouth of the bottle. In a few moments, the burning paper creates a pressure difference strong enough to suck the egg in through the mouth of the bottle.
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Layer oil on water. Take a small glass, pour a quarter-cup of water into it and add some food coloring. Once you've mixed the coloring into the water, pour in a quarter cup of oil. You'll find that no matter how much you shake or stir the glass, when you let it sit the oil and the water don't mix. If you want to take it a step further, pour a drop of soap into the glass and see what happens.
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Animate a few raisins. Fill a tall glass with a clear soda, and add a few raisins. While the raisins sink at first, the carbon dioxide gas in the soda, its fizz, begins to bubble around the raisins. Those bubbles carry the raisins back up the glass until they reach the surface. The gas then leaves the glass, causing the raisin to sink back to the bottom for the process to begin again.
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Transform a liquid into a solid. Place a bowl on top of a paper-towel flat on a table. Pour a quarter-cup of cornstarch in the bowel, and begin adding the quarter-cup of water slowly, until the mixture acts like a liquid when you slowly stir. Tap on the surface of the mixture, and it becomes hard. Grab a handful and you can rub it into a ball, but if you hold it still it slips between your fingers.
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Tips & Warnings
Never leave children unsupervised with matches
Dispose of the cornstarch and water mixture by slowly pouring it down the drain under running water.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit science image by timur1970 from Fotolia.com
