Search Results
Showing results 1 to 16 of 16

Straw Oboe: Two lips make sound
Source Institutions
Oboes's unique sound originates from the two small reeds a musician blows into. Make your own double reed instrument out of straw!

Designer Ears: Make “better” ears!
Source Institutions
Find out what it would be like to have ears shaped differently from your own! Design and make different animal ears then try them out.

File Card Bridges
Source Institutions
With two stacks of books and a few rolls of pennies, build two kinds of bridges--a beam span and an arch span--and see how much weight each of them can hold.

Paper Bridges
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners build bridges using paper and explore how much weight each bridge design can support.

Straws and Pins
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners build bridges and cantilevers in a series of "building out" challenges with straws and pins.

Motor Effect
Source Institutions
See what force a magnet has on a wire that has current running through it: will it push it, pull it, or will nothing happen? This is the foundation of a simple electric motor.

Clay Bridges
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners make bridges using an oil-based modeling clay (plasticene). The instructions include discussion questions for both before and after bridge building.

Clay Beams and Columns
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners make or use pre-made clay beams to scale and proportion. Specifically, they discover that when you scale up proportionally (i.e.

Coffee-Can Cuíca
Source Institutions
Make a cuíca (“kwee-ka”), a traditional Brazilian musical instrument that originated in Africa. Played primarily in Brazil, now you can play it at home, too, with this Exploratorium produced activity.

Garden Poles
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners build large-scale structures and cantilevers in a series of "building out" challenges with garden poles and tape.

Simple Pop-Up Mechanisms
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners construct three quick and simple mechanisms to start building a pop-up book. Learners fold, cut, and glue paper to make a bird beak, parallelogram, and V-fold.

Gieant Sieve Sorter
Source Institutions
This Exploratorium activity explores size and scale. Through four levels of screen sizes, learners can sort out objects of different sizes.

Wind Tubes
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners create and experiment with wind tubes. These tubes are a playful and inventive way to explore the effect that moving air has on objects.

Geodesic Gumdrops: Candy and Toothpick Architecture
Source Institutions
This hands-on activity shows you how to build basic architectural shapes out of toothpicks and gumdrops.

Newspaper Bridges
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners build bridges out of newspaper and tape to explore how structures are designed to bear loads.

Skewers and Garden Poles
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners build scaled-down structures and cantilevers in a series of "building out" challenges with bamboo skewers and tape.