Fun Science Activities

Today, P came back home and was very excited. When I enquired about her excitement , she said "Today, we played games at school and I feel very energetic. So, tell me what experiments are we doing for the science activities". Till then I was not sure of the topic and so was still wondering what kind of activities to do. But, the word "energetic" gave me the idea of doing some experiments related to energy transfer. That's how it all started. We have  heard the word 'energy' quite a few times. But, let's see what it really means in physics. What is Energy? Energy is the measurement of the ability of something  to do any work.  It is not a material substance. Energy exists in many different forms such as light energy, mechanical energy, heat energy, sound energy, chemical energy, nuclear energy and so on. Though we hear so much about energy consumption, energy can never be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred from one form to...

In our activity kids were shown a plate full of different food items. This plate mainly had items with different types of acids in them such as tamarind with tartaric acid, banana with malic acid etc., . After which we had a  discussion around why some items taste sour, salty,  bland etc. Also, in baking, how cake dough rises to become soft and fluffy, the chemical reactions that take place due to baking soda ( sodium bi carbonate) and buttermilk in the recipe. Kids were able to guess acids are sour and baking soda , baking powder are bases. Then we talked about what is pH (power of hydrogen) scale and what it means in chemistry. What is a pH scale ?  Scientists use the pH scale to measure how acidic or basic a liquid is. pH scale has a range from 0 to 14. From 0 to 7 are acids with 0 being the strongest acid. From 7 to 14 are bases with 14 being the strongest base. Since we can not be tasting every item to find out if it is a acid or base, the easi...