Sharpen Your Superpower of Observation

A few months back, I was watering and rearranging some plants, when I accidentally knocked off a few begonia flowers. The flowers were beautiful, and I couldn’t stand to sweep them off the deck. Instead, I brought them into the kitchen to put them in a small vase. That’s when I noticed it. The flowers …

Let’s Have a Seed Hunt

Have you ever stopped to think how many seeds you run across every day? Seeds are everywhere in our daily lives. Seeds show up in every meal we cook. There are seeds to observe during each walk in our neighborhood. Seeds sometimes look very different from one another. The different sizes of seeds can be …

Make Oobleck: A Non-Newtonian Fluid

Oobleck! It’s a funny name for an odd fluid that defies general liquids’ properties, which earns it the category of non-Newtonian behavior. The defining characteristic of oobleck is that its viscosity changes depending on shear rate, meaning the fluidity changes depending on how much pressure is put on the liquid. If little pressure is put …

Make “Clouds”: Ivory Soap in the Microwave

Here’s an easy two-minute experiment you can try in your microwave. All you need is a bar of Ivory soap! (Take note that you must use Ivory soap for this project to work.) What You Need: Ivory bar soap Knife Directions Step 1 Unwrap a bar of Ivory soap and cut it into six pieces …

How to Reveal a Plant’s Vascular System

Are you looking for a WOW-factor experiment? Then this is the one! For maximum impact, I suggest the next-level option with the highlighter and black light. Plants are more complicated than they appear on the surface. But did you know you can reveal the framework of plant’s physiology in a simple experiment at home? What …

Snow Volcano Made from Diet Cola and Salt

I confess. I’m not a fan of diet soda. Quite honestly, I can’t think of a better way to use diet soda than to make a snow-cano in the back yard, because I certainly won’t be drinking it. For the first time ever, I appreciate diet soda. It’s worth noting any carbonated soda may be …

How to Make an Origami Fortune Teller

Whether you’ve made a fortune teller before or not, I bet you don’t know how many squares were hidden in the fold lines. What You Need: A square piece of paper or origami paper Directions Step 1 Fold the paper in half, and then unfold. Step 2 Fold the paper in half in the other …

Making Dye From Natural Materials (Farm to Yarn)

When you pulled a shirt out of your closet this morning, what color shirt was it? Did you wear a vivid red or brilliant blue? The bright colors we have access to today generally weren’t available until the introduction of synthetic (man-made) dyes and the industrial revolution. Before these milestones in chemistry and modern science, …