We have reached Day #6, our halfway point in our 12 Days of Wonder. Today’s spotlight science toy is Larry’s Lab Polymer Science Kit.
Steve Spangler Science is celebrating the 12 Days of Wonder and highlighting our top 12 science toys and kits that are perfect to put under the tree. As blog editor, social media coordinator and mom of two budding scientists, I will share my review of each product. Steve Spangler Science also found 12 respected, popular mom bloggers to each test and review one of our 12 science gifts. I will include a link to their blogs and their honest reviews of each gift idea at the bottom of this post. Today, Liz from The Kitchen Pantry Scientist shares her review. The kit is also the Deal of the Day. So check our blog every day for the next few weeks to learn all about our 12 Days of Wonder.
The Phuket Gazette out of Phuket, Thailand is reporting that our Jelly Marbles have helped solved a UFO mystery. Earlier this month, small, round, clear spheres seemingly fell from the sky onto the Wichit home in Phuket. The family was puzzled at what these “Unidentified Falling Objects” could be until the Gazette found our Jelly Marbles video on YouTube and remarked that the resemblance between the UFOs and our marbles is “uncanny.” The Department of Medical Sciences in Bangkok is still researching the UFOs and expect to release a full report on their findings in early October. In the meantime, the family and the Gazette seem pretty convinced that the UFOs are in fact our very own Jelly Marbles. Read the whole story here.
What do you see? A bowl of water? Yes, it’s a bowl of water, but it’s also filled with Clear Spheres – a water-absorbing polymer that soaks up 300 times its weight in water. It’s a science demonstration that many of us have done with our students to demonstrate the index of refraction. When you drop the hydrated spheres into the bowl of water, they vanish since the water-filled spheres have an identical index of refraction as the water in the bowl. This quick sequence was part of the opening scene on the show Numb3rs and used to illustrate things that are “hidden from our view.”
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.
The Phuket Gazette out of Phuket, Thailand is reporting that our 
