If you’ve had fun reading about Steve Spangler’s science adventures in this blog, you should check out his extensive experiment library. SteveSpanglerScience.com offers hundreds of ever-changing, ever-growing free experiments!
From floating, growing Ivory Soap to finding the iron in a dollar bill, you are sure to find just the right experiment that uses materials you have right in your home. This library represents all of Steve’s most amazing, most requested experiments from his 9NEWS television segment as well as other appearances throughout his career.
Molecular gastronomy sounds more like a condition than something cool to eat. It’s a cool kind of science that is sweeping trendy restaurants across the country.
Ingredients undergo change while cooking. Molecular gastronomy studies the physical and chemical changes that food undergoes while cooking. Certain ingredients produce certain reactions and it’s the newest trend for chefs to make fake caviar from sodium alginate. Instant ice cream is also created from using liquid nitrogen.
The Prayer Vase or Genie in a Bottle is a guaranteed fun way to trick your friends using only items you can find around the house.
The science magician displays a bottle and a short length of rope. She explains that according to the ancient legends, a genie lives in the bottle. While you can’t see the genie, if you tickle him with something like a rope, it makes him mad and he hangs onto the rope. The rope is inserted into the bottle and jiggled a bit. When the bottle with the rope still inside it is turned upside down, the rope is seen to dangle unsupported from the bottle. The magician explains that the genie is even strong enough to make the bottle float. Now, the bottle and rope are turned right side up. While holding only the end of the rope, the magician lets go
Styrofoam is a material that won’t break down, can’t be recycled and will always remain on earth. Unless you know a little science.
Styrofoam is made up of long strands of styrene molecules with lots of air pockets. It’s called polystyrene. The styrene strands dissolve in acetone. They seem to disappear like magic when the acetone and polystyrene react together.
We must reduce our usage of styrofoam or replace it with more earth-friendly materials like corn. Packing peanuts made from corn will dissolve in water. Reusing styrofoam is another earth-friendly way to use styrofoam, but recycling it is not possible.
Do you like your ice cream cold? Do you like your ice cream really, really cold at maybe around -321 °F? Visit The Crushery at 1579 Pearl Street in Denver and you will experience ice cream in a whole new way.
The Crushery makes ice cream treats using liquid nitrogen. They have about 10,000 ingredients to choose from and create that unique made-to-order ice cream favor. They also have vegan, frozen yogurt and sugar free ice cream.
The process freezes the ice cream and ingredients quickly – within about 5 minutes. The ice crystals inside the ice cream are very small compared to typical ice cream, allowing The Crushery’s ice cream mix masters to add almost any ingredient including popcorn. The popcorn stays crunchy instead of soggy.
If you are fortunate in your career, you have a mentor or someone you owe your inspiration and direction in starting down the chosen path in life. Chemistry teacher Doug Hodous at Heritage High School was my inspiration. As I sat across the hall from his classroom and listened to the occasional explosions and laughter coming from the room, I knew I needed to find a way into that class.
I caught the science bug in that chemistry class. I also noticed a cute blonde in that class that I later married. But that’s another story.
Doug and I did a signature experiment of his for my television segment this week. The demonstration involves a genie, a singing pipe and a secret for awakening the genie of the pipe.
