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.
Don’t bring your new neighbors a bottle of wine as a house warming gift. You are more creative, fun and love pranks. This ultimate prank uses the simplest of props… a plastic soda bottle filled with water. Even though the words “DO NOT OPEN” are printed on the bottle, people just can’t resist the temptation.
To make your own leaky bottle, you just need an empty plastic soda bottle, Sharpie pen, push pins and water. Fill the plastic bottle with water (make sure you screw the cap on tight). Write “DO NOT OPEN” on the outside. Use your push pin to poke little holes around the lower half of the bottle. Then head on over to the neighbor’s house.
They will not be able to resist opening the bottle. When they do, a nice little sprinkler spray of water will welcome them with open arms.
Since fireworks are no longer an option, you have to find some way to occupy your time on the 4th of July. I turned to my demo team and brainstormed anything we could do in the backyard at 9News for the celebration. Here’s the classic Elephant’s Toothpaste demo using hydrogen peroxide and potassium iodide as the catalyst to make a red, white and blue patriotic eruption that shot up about 20 feet in the air.
We also learned that Oxiclean is the magic cleaner that will remove iodine stains from the beautifully pressed white shirt of a news anchor (thanks to Mark Koebrich for being the best Science Monday co-host in the world!)
UPDATED JULY 5, 2011 – Mark Koebrich asked photo journalist Brian Willie to share some behind-the-scenes video of this amazing eruption. Yes, everyone was wearing safety glasses. It’s important
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A pendulum is anything that swings back and forth on a string, chain or rope. Due to their properties, they are good for timekeeping and are found in old clocks. Pendulums are also used for measuring gravity. Pendulums are in Seismometers and even used in religious purposes as a swinging incense burner called a censer. Even a playground swing is a pendulum.
For this experiment, we will start out with a string and 15 washers to make our pendulum. Tie 14 of the washers to one end of the string and the last washer to the other end. To test out the functionality of the pendulum, dangle the string over your friend’s finger. Common sense tells us that the end with 14 washers will crash to the table when the other side is released. Does the pendulum hit the table?
It doesn’t, thanks to the acceleration downward of the
We have shared many slime recipes over the years - Elmer’s Glue Slime is always a favorite, made with water, glue and Borax. Or Glacier GAK, made to show the movement of glaciers. We at Steve Spangler Science sell gallons upon gallons of Atomic Glowing Slime, Clear Slime and the ever popular Green Slime.
Recently, someone posted the question on our Facebook Fan Page about making slime using a material from the hospital. The secret comes from our PVA or polyvinyl alcohol slime.
Your local hospital has disposable laundry bags made from polyvinyl alcohol. They place laundry that shouldn’t be handled from a hospital bed into the bag, tie it up and drop it in the laundry shoot. The bag goes straight into the washer without being opened. The PVA breaks down in the water and dissolves.
Are you hungry for homemade ice cream? Are you in a hurry? You can whip up a batch of liquid nitrogen ice cream in just a few minutes. Just add a little half and half, candy and of course a little liquid nitrogen…
