If your kids are the inquisitive types, they probably need near constant stimulation to stay interested in things, especially at the weekends.
Luckily, the internet is full of cool (and cheap) science experiments you can do at home. Here are five of our favourites.
Find your blind spot with a card
I bet you didn’t realise you don’t see everything in front of you. This cool experiment shows kids that they have blind spots in their vision (which is probably why they can’t find anything ever).
All you need is a 3×5 inch card and a ruler to carefully mark a dot and a cross on the card. Then hold the card at arm’s length directly in front of your face, making sure the cross is on the right. Close one eye, and move the card toward your face. You’ll soon see either the dot or the cross disappear (depending on which eye is closed). That’s because that side of the card has entered your blind spot.
Learn how crystals are formed (by making candy)
This experiment (on a page with loads of other experiments) takes a couple of days, so make sure your kids understand that they have to be patient.
Start by melting 3 cups of sugar into 1 cup of water on the stove. Bring the mixture briefly to the boil, stirring constantly. Allow it to cool down a bit, and add some food colouring. Once it has cooled down enough, pour it into a glass jar. Wrap some string around a pencil. You want the string to hang into the water mixture, almost touching the bottom, when you balance the pencil on the lip of the jar. Take a look at the jar every day for three to five days, and you’ll soon see big crystals forming on the string. That is essentially how crystals form out in nature, too.
Discover how sound travels through solid objects
This experiment comes from the Science Museum, so you know it’s going to be cool and fun. Sound waves can travel through lots of materials. We normally think about it travelling through air, so it’s fun to see how our perception of those waves changes depending on what we hear them through.
Take a wire hanger, and bang it. Listen to the sound it makes. Now tie two pieces of string to the bottom corners. Wrap the strings around your index fingers, and stick your fingers in your ears. Hit the hanger again. It should sound more like a gong ringing in your ears than a hanger.
Power a boat with soap – seriously
This can be a bath time experiment, but it has to be conducted with water that doesn’t already have soap in it, so no bubble baths.
Get a bit of cardboard, and cut it out into a boat shape. Cut a little notch in the back of the boat. Float the boat in some clean water (either in the bathtub or in the sink). Get a toothpick and some washing up liquid, and gather a small drop of the washing up liquid on the tip of the toothpick (it’s easier to do this if you pour the washing up liquid into a small cup first). Place the drop of washing up liquid on the notch in the boat, and watch it shoot across the water!
This page has a great explanation of how this works.
Take the spaghetti challenge
This fun experiment, also from the Science Museum, teaches kids about structural engineering, including which shapes are the strongest. Best of all, it can easily be turned into a game, so they can have lots of fun while they learn.
Get some uncooked spaghetti, some marshmallows and a timer. Set the timer for a couple minutes, and see who can build the tallest spaghetti tower in that time. Then comes the really challenging part. Place a crème egg in the structures, and see which can hold the weight the best. The winners are the ones who build the tallest tower that can also hold the egg’s weight.
So which of these experiments are you going to do this weekend? Let us know what you get up to and what your kids think of these experiments in the comments!
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