I always know that the Spangler Science Product Development Team is going to hit a home run... but I was especially excited when they told me that we were going to have green Solar Beads available for the first time and as the only supplier on the internet. Maybe I went a little overboard suggesting that we find beads … Continue reading…
It's an e-mail that probably showed up in your inbox... Create an Exploding Drink! The prank is based on the widely known phenomenon of dropping MENTOS® chewy mints into soda to create an erupting geyser. Instead of just dropping the Mentos into soda, the pranksters suggest freezing a Mento in the middle of an ice cube. Serve your friend a … Continue reading…
SteveSpanglerScience.com Wins Two Prestigious Multi-Channel Merchant Awards for Outstanding Customer Engagement
After many long months of suspense, the winners of the 24th Annual Multichannel Merchant Awards were finally announced during a special luncheon at the ACCM show in New Orleans last week. The SteveSpanglerScience.com team took … Continue reading…
What happens when you put 150 teachers from 23 states and three countries in the same room for three days with a team of instructors who are over-the-top excited about teaching science? Enthusiasm for making science fun spreads like a virus. Concerns about test scores, curriculum changes or the ever-changing pressures of being a teacher seem to vanish. For three … Continue reading…
I’ll have to admit that my Trash Can Smoke Rings routine is not only a signature staple in my stage show, but it’s become one of my all-time favorite science demos to perform. After presenting my smoke ring routine on the Ellen Show, I received a flood of e-mails with questions about the smoke machine and where to purchase the device. Unfortunately, the cost of a good smoke machine can be a deal breaker for many smoke ring enthusiasts. That’s why I’m hoping you try my latest variation… Smoke Bomb Smoke Rings.
As I mentioned in a previous post, it’s always fun to stumble across Quirkles videos on YouTube. These fun children’s books support connecting science and literature, which is one of our passions around Steve Spangler Science. This week, Quirkles co-founder Terri Johnson, headed back to Ozarks First KOLR 10 news to show off some of the cool properties of Oobleck… the cornstarch and water quicksand. Terri had a great time getting messy with the KOLR 10 anchor and even made mention of the growing popularity of walking on “water” with the gooey Oobleck. If you are a fan of Spangler Science or the Ellen Degeneres show, you probably remember when I stormed the stage of the Ellen show with a cement truck, a few hundred gallons of water, 2,500 boxes of cornstarch and a very brave audience member, who walked across a giant pool of Oobleck! It’s great to see Terri in her Spangler Science tie dye lab coat playing with the “Zop”! The set of all 26 wild and wacky Quirkles books can be bought on our site at SteveSpanglerScience.com.
We are honored to periodically host the Carnival of Education. Hats off to our good friend Jane Goodwin for all of her work on the latest Carnival. - editor
Welcome to the Carnival of Education, hosted right here at Steve Spangler Science! As all good teachers well know, the best education is the education that encourages us all to get down and dirty with it: in other words, touch it, feel it, experience it fully. Connect it with other things you know. Activate your schema! Textbooks are good, and full of fascinating and useful information. However, if one student is given a textbook reading assignment and nothing else, and another student is encouraged to get up after reading and APPLY what he just read by putting his/her hands into and on and around smelly, goopy, noisy, exploding, changing, growing things, guess which student is going to remember the lesson best? Guess which student is going to talk about the lesson at the dinner table that nig?t. Yeah, that’s what we THOUGHT you’d all say! AWESOME!
Here we go! Let’s walk around the lab and see what we’ve …
If it’s light at 4:00 a.m. in Alaska, why not try to broadcast live from the ship? We were 70 miles off the coast of Alaska on our way to Sitka when we broadcast this video back to KUSA-TV in Denver via Skype. Huge thanks to MTN Satellite Services and the Carnival Information Systems people for providing the increased bandwidth to broadcast our segment.
It’s not too difficult to fly out of bed in the morning when you know that you’re going to spend part of the day hanging out with sea otters and maybe a few whales. The morning started early for our video crew - Bradley Mayhew and Jeff Brooks - as I knocked on their cabin doors at 3:45 a.m. to get ready to broadcast live back to the NBC affiliate KUSA-TV in Denver from the deck of the ship. Just a few years ago, a three minute broadcast like this would have cost huge amounts of money. Thanks to tools like Skype, it’s possible to broadcast for almost anywhere - 70 miles off the coast of Alaska for today’s broadcast. Huge props to MTN Satellite Services for providing the increased bandwidth to broadcast our segment.
Activate your schema! Textbooks are good, and full of fascinating and useful information. However, if one student is given a textbook reading assignment and nothing else, and another student is encouraged to get up after reading and APPLY what he just read by putting his/her hands into and on and around smelly, goopy, noisy, exploding, changing, growing things, guess which student is going to remember the lesson best? Guess which student is going to talk about the lesson at the dinner table that nig?t. Yeah, that’s what we THOUGHT you’d all say! AWESOME!
