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Cleaning with Dirt
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Learners build a filter from old soda bottles and dirt. They create polluted water, and pour it through their filter to clean it.
Trading Places: Redox Reactions
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Visitors add drops of copper sulfate solution onto a steel nail. They observe the nail change color from silver to brown as the copper plates onto the nail.
Forwards and Backwards: pH and Indicators
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Visitors prepare six solutions combining vinegar and ammonia that range incrementally from acid (all vinegar) to base (all ammonia).
Build a Battery
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Learners make a simple battery out of "sandwiches" of aluminum foil, pennies, and a salt water-soaked paper towel.
Diaper Dissection
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This is written as a display, but can easily be adapted to a hands-on activity. Learners discover how all the parts of a diaper work together to keep babies dry and comfortable.
In the Toilet
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This activity explores the basic workings of a siphon, which is the core technology that makes toilets work.
Yeast Balloons
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Visitors observe a bottle with a balloon attached around the mouth. The bottle contains a solution of yeast, sugar, and water.
Common Scents
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Learners use a mortar and pestle to extract clove oil from cloves using denatured alcohol. They put this oil on paper, which they can take home.
Salting Out
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In this activity, learners create a mixture of water, alcohol and permanent marker ink, and then add salt to form a colored alcohol layer on top of a colorless water layer.
Pot-in-Pot Refrigeration
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In this activity (on page 2 of PDF), learners create a low-tech refrigerator that requires no electricity to keep food from spoiling.
Diving Submarine
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Learners use a commercially available toy to experiment with density. They fill a chamber in the toy submarine with baking powder and release it into a tank of water.
Cool It!
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Learners make a refrigerator that works without electricity. The pot-in-pot refrigerator works by evaporation: a layer of sand is placed between two terra cotta pots and thoroughly soaked with water.
Pollution Diffusion
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Learners design their own experiment to investigate how pollution diffuses through ground material.
Plastic Milk: You can make plastic from milk
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In this activity (on page 2 of the PDF), learners make a plastic protein polymer from milk. Adding vinegar to milk causes the protein casein to solidify or curdle.
Curious Contraptions
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In this engineering design activity, learners will design, test, and build a “haunting machine” to solve a Sherlockian mystery.
Hot and Cold: Endothermic and Exothermic Reactions
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Visitors mix urea with water in one flask and mix calcium chloride with water in another flask. They observe that the urea flask gets cold and the calcium chloride flask gets hot.
It's A Gas!
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Visitors mix water and sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) in a large flask. They then add citric acid to the mixture and stopper the flask. The resulting reaction creates carbon dioxide gas.
All Mixed Up!: Separating Mixtures
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Visitors separate a mixture of pebbles, salt crystals, and wood shavings by adding water and pouring the mixture through a strainer.
Shrinkers
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Visitors use heat to shrink samples of polystyrene. They compare samples from containers that were shaped in different ways during manufacturing.
Concentrate: Concentrations and Reaction Rates
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Visitors incrementally increase the amount of iodate in three different test tubes containing the same amount of a starch solution.