Fun Science Activities

It was that time of the year; the joyful Christmas season. The kids wished to make some ornaments for their Christmas trees. To involve science in this activity [as usual ;-) ], I planned to show them 'crystal snowflake ornaments'. Materials needed  1. Borax powder - 3 tbsp 2. Water - 1 cup 3. Pipe cleaners - 2 [colors of your choice] 4. Strings - 2 5. Pencils - 2. 6. Bottles - 2. 7. Food colors - 2 drops (optional) Procedure 1. Boil a cup of water and mix the borax powder in it to make a borax solution. 2. Add food color [optional]. 3. Take a pipe cleaner and twist it into a star shape to give it a snowflake figure. 4. Pour the borax solution into a bottle or a glass. 4. Hang the pipe cleaner inside the borax solution using a string and a pencil. 5. Leave this setup undisturbed in a place for a day or two. 6. Your beautiful crystal ornament is ready for hanging! Cut 3 equal pieces of a pipe cleaner Twist them together to make a star ...

Last year we had been to Leh, Ladakh. There the tour guide was explaining to us how the Zanskar river freezes during winter where visitors go for trekking on the frozen river. It was amusing to my son who asked me, if Pacific ocean would also freeze just like the rivers in Leh. I replied to him to think about it and promised that we would do an experiment to verify when we get back home. So, to explain to him I decided to the following experiment in the class.  Ocean Freeze The experiment was about salt water freezing. We had a discussion about why the ocean does not freeze at 0 degrees.  Kids came up with different reasons. Guess what they were! There are 4 main factors for that. 1. High concentration of salt in the ocean water lowers the freezing point from 0 degrees to -2 degree centigrade. 2. The constant motion of the ocean currents keeps the water molecules from freezing into ice crystals. 3. The larger the volume of water, the more heat has to be remov...

Our activity started with kids imagining to go to school  by a car, that is environmental friendly and flies in the air. One of them said , if he lived on a mountain and the school was in a valley he would do paragliding. So, we talked about gliders and how they fly without motors.Gliders always descend relative to the air in which they are flying. Para gliders, hand gliders are some of the gliders that we see these days. What are Gliders? Gliders are a type of aircraft which do not have engine, but use the wing design and air flow to fly around. Now, it was time for them to build one themselves, but using a different design and shape that they had seen. I gave them a straw to throw, which did not go very far. As they were brain storming, the idea of adding loops instead of the wings came to them. They were quick to decide that they would need 2 hoops instead of one to make it fly for some time. That is how kids made a hoop glider. It worked really well. design for...