There’s only one problem with these “best of” video lists… someone has to actually sort through all of the videos and come up with a list! Props to our genius video editor, Bradley Mayhew, for all of his editing magic in 2008. When the year starts out with 4,500 pounds of cornstarch and water and a cement truck on The Ellen Degeneres Show… you know it’s going to be quite a year! Our video and experiment library has grown to almost 400, with 70 new science videos added to our science video library just this year. Selecting our Top 10 Videos for the year was tough, but here are our personal favorites. Let us know what you think…
We might like to play the same game during the holidays… Guess which toy the kids will play with the most after everything has been ripped open and the house is a disaster. That’s the criteria we used in selecting this year’s Top 25 Holiday Gift Ideas from SteveSpanglerScience.com. If you’re looking for a toy or gift that makes the person receiving it say, “This is so cool!”, you can’t go wrong with anything on the list.
Fun Fly Stick
It’s an ingenious, battery-operated static electricity generator that allows you to float cool tinsel shapes on a cloud of electrons. Bring the family over for Christmas, pull that tinsel off the tree and get ready for the applause… it doesn’t get much better than this. Oh, and if you don’t want to tear apart the Christmas decorations, the Fun Fly Stick comes with five tinsel shapes that are ready to fly.
Static electricity demos are a staple in every science teacher’s bag of tricks, but this science demo was different than anything I had ever seen. The Fun Fly Stick was first introduced in Europe and made it’s way to the U.S. earlier this year. It’s an ingenious, battery-operated static electricity generator that allows you to float these cool tinsel shapes on a cloud of electrons. Watch the video to see what I mean…
Okay, so how does it work? The electronic circuitry inside the handle of the device is actually a negative ion generator. Just press the button for few seconds to generate a negative static charge. Drop the tinsel shape onto the stick to quickly transfer the negative charge to the tinsel… and the darn thing floats! This reminded me …