It’s true that I find some of my best experiment inspiration in the hardware store. My team often likes to tell the story about spending five hours at Home Depot before a conference in Atlanta… don’t believe everything you hear. This Teflon Tape experiment is one of my favorites because young scientists get to use a pretty common household material to make their own secret messages. Check out the video below, then read the experiment for the whole story.
Fill the glass jar with water and cover it with a card. As you turn the whole thing upside down, the audience can hardly contain themselves. The room quiets down as you precariously position the inverted jar and card a few feet above someone’s head. And yes, I love the look of terror on my “helper’s” face when I take the card out from under the jar. Watch the video below and read the experiment for a lesson on how to make some science magic.
It’s true that I have some favorite experiments that seem to make it into most of my workshops and presentations. It’s always nice to have a few “stand-bys” in my back pocket that I can use in case of a science emergency. But, it’s even more fun to come up with new variations for the standards. I was excited to introduce the Dancing Raisins experiment on 9News… with some fun new twists. Watch the video to check out the fun.
We now have over 100,000 subscribers who receive our Science Experiment of the Week in their inbox each Wednesday morning. We’ve had requests to create a widget (especially from teachers who blog), and we finally did it using Widgetbox. The widget is called Science Experiment of the Week from Steve Spangler. We think it’s a cool widget that shares both experiments and our featured videos.
If you don’t have a website, you can still sign-up for the e-mail version of our Experiment of the Week. We’ll deliver a brief e-mail that’s packed with cool science ideas you can put to use right away. And you have my personal guarantee that neither your name nor your e-mail address will be shared with anyone or any company. Our mailing lists are not for sale, rent, loan, lease or barter to anyone. Ever.
I’d really like to hear your feedback on how the widget works on your website.
I’m excited that people are using our library of easy science experiments over at SteveSpanglerScience.com. Over 100,000 people receive our Experiment of the Week,but as you might imagine the level of interest goes through the roof at this time of the year when everyone is searching for a cool science experiment or science project idea. My hope is that parents will take a minute to view the opening video on our Science Fair Secrets page to better understand how to help their children avoid the most common science fair mistake - not understanding the difference between a science demonstration (a cool science trick) and a real science experiment. As so many of you know, it’s easy to turn a science demonstration into an experiment as long as you understand how to control a variable and compare results from a number of trials.
You’ll find lots of science fair resources for both students and parents on our Science Fair Secrets page and just a few ideas that might get your creative juice flowing.
