Science experiment Archives - Page 8 of 14

STEM Activity – Build a Bridge with Everyday Items

August 12, 2016 By Deirdre

This build a bridge activity is the third in a series of learning activities that feature school supplies. Earlier posts have shared STEM activities with #2 pencils and ramp activities with a 3-ring binder. Watch for more school supply activities next week here on JDaniel4’s Mom and on our Facebook page.

Building a bridge with rubber bands, markers , and a yardstick may seem like an easy activity to do. In my mind I had it all planned out. In reality, my simple plan did not work out. It ended up being more complicated. STEM activities can work out that way. Even the activity designer needs to attempt various solutions to the problem before finding a way that works.

My Build a Bridge Plan

Your children will probably come up with alternative plans for building a bridge. Let me walk you through the steps I used. You can have them modify and change them as you or they see fit.

Supplies

12 Rubber Bands
12 Thin Markers
Egg Carton with Top Vents
Yardstick
Toy Car
Scissors

Bridge Creation Steps

You will start by piercing each egg section on the bottom of an egg carton with scissors. If you don’t feel comfortable with your kids doing that, you can pierce the cartons for them ahead of time.

Then you are going to connect each of the markers in pairs with a rubber band. You can loop one end of the rubber band around one marker. Next yo will twist the end of the rubber band a few times. Finally you will attach the other end of the rubber band to the other marker in the pair. You will repeat this process six times.

The markers pair will be placed in the holes in the carton. You will place the pairs side by side.

Then you will open up the egg carton. You will need to place a rubber band around each pair of markers. We placed ours about two inches from the base of the markers.

Once you have the rubber bands in place, you will close up the egg carton and turn it on its side. This next step is a little tricky, some children may need help with it. You will need to pop the end of each marker out the vent hole. You don’t need to have the stick out very far. Why do you need to do this? It will cause the tops of the markers to pull out and not push in. Your toy car will travel more easily on the bridge this way.

Finally you will place on a flat surface with the tops of the markers facing up. Then place a yardstick or ruler on top of the rubber bands.

Testing Your Build A Bridge

It is time to test out your bridge by sending a toy car across it. We considered it a success when the car made it past all the marker bridge supports without falling off. Your kids may decide that too.

Static Electricity Olympic Flame Experiment

July 11, 2016 By Deirdre

We just love doing science experiments. This summer we have made a water wheel, ocean waves in a bottle, and a shot put catapult. A few years ago we did a static electricity experiment that used tissue paper and a balloon to make a butterflies wings flap. With the Olympics coming up later this summer I thought it would be fun to repeat the static electricity experiment with an Olympic torch and tissue paper flames. Using static electricity to make the flames flicker would be so cool.

Assembling the Static Electricity Tools

Supplies

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Cardboard from a cereal box
Colored Tissue Paper (red, yellow, and orange)
Glue stick
Black Marker
Scissors

Putting the Torch Together

We cut the torch handle out of cardboard taken from the side of a cereal box. You can cut out the torch freehand or do what we did. We folded a piece of paper in half and cut the torch shape out of the paper. After unfolding the torch cutout, we traced the shape onto the cardboard. Then we cut the torch out of the cardboard. We then created a black outline along the edge of the torch.

After cutting out a number of flame shaped pieces out of the tissue, we glued one flame onto the torch at a time. We glued the tissue flames in several rows. We tried to alternate between each of the colors. We decided they would look must flame like that way.

Conducting the Static Electricity Experiment

While you can rub a balloon on a piece of wool or on a carpet, we rubber our balloons on our heads. You may want to have your children use several different sources of static electricity while conducting your experiment.

After gathering electricity, the next step is to rub it on the Olympic torch’s flames. The negatively charged surface of the balloon attracts the positively charged flames. This causes the tissue flames to look like they are flickering. It is so cool!

We tried to make the all of the flames move. You may want to try to move one section of the torch at a time. It would be fun to see the flames flicker at one area at a time.

If you like this Olympic themed activity, here are some more activities I think you will like:

Easy Painting Ideas- Gold Medal Painting

Olympic Torch Painting Projects

Fruit Filled Olympic Ring Snack

Elympics – Storybook and Lunch Creation Idea

Olympic Printable Passport

Water Experiment with Milk Jug Water Wheel

June 29, 2016 By Deirdre

Sometimes you do a water experiment like making water flow high and low, controlling water flow, making waves and making LEGO man float that are done in just one way. This water experiment was done a number ways and in two different locations. We kept coming up new ways to make the water wheel spin. Actually JDaniel kept coming up with new ways to conduct this water experiment.

Putting the Water Wheel Together

Supplies

milk jug
scissors
large jar lid
pencil
chopstick
nuts (2)
duct tape

Creating the Water Wheel

You start by tracing the jar lid onto one side of a milk jug with a pencil. Then cut the circle out of the milk jug.

Cut twelve slits into the circle. You will cut from the end into almost the center of the circle. Then remove every other wheel section. (You can see how we made our wheels above.)

Use a hole punch to make a whole in the center of the wheel. Then try pushing the chopstick through the whole. If it is a tight fit, you can make the hole a little bigger. You want the wheel to be able to move freely around the chopstick.

Ideas for the Water Experiment

Water Experiment One – Just Wheel and Chopstick

We took the water wheel and chopstick outside. They were placed on top of a large food storage container. Then water was poured down over the top of the wheel.

Results: We found that the wheel will spin. It spun sideways a little and moved around on the chopstick.

Water Experiment Two -Wheel ,Chopstick, and Bolts

We took the water wheel, chopstick and the storage container inside. A bolt was placed on either side of the wheel. The bolts were not place right next to the wheel. We wanted to leave room for the wheel to move a little.

Water spilling out of the faucet was our water source. We experimented with the flow of the water. Everything from a slow stream to a full on gush was explored.

Results: The bolts helped the wheel stay upright a little more. The wheel spun faster.

Water Experiment Three – Wheel, Chopstick, Water Sprayer

Duct tape was placed on either side of the water wheel to help it stay in place. I thought it would be fun to see if it made a difference in the way the wheel spun. My son decided we should ditch the storage container and just hold the water wheel on the chopstick.

Results: As long as the water sprayer was held right over the top of the wheel it was able to spin very quickly. This was declared the most fun way to do the experiment.

Whether you try just science experiment or all three of them, I think your children will enjoy exploring water and water wheels. If you like this science experiment you will find more on my Early Learning Science board on Pinterest. Over 13,000 people follow this board.

STEM Activities – Making a Balloon Boat Move

June 20, 2016 By Deirdre

It’s a balloon! It’s a boat! It is STEM activities that look at balloons moving boats! Well, I guess I should say the balloon help the boat move. This summer I have shared with you a number STEM activities and science experiments with water. There was the LEGO man sink and float experiment and the learning how to make a wave. This experiment was probably the trickiest to conduct.

What made it tricky? The hard part is air containment. Just trying to keep the air in the balloon made this experiment a STEM experiment at my house.

STEM Activities

Creating Our Boat

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We created our boat by using a hole punch to create a hole in the side of a plastic frozen dinner container. It was a challenge getting the punch to slip over the lip, but we finally got it done.

Then we placed a straw in a fun balloon with polka dots that had been inflated a few times. (Pre-stretching the balloon made it easier to inflated during the experiment.)

The straw was attached to the balloon with electrical tape. (I think any type of tape that is waterproof would do.)

The end of the straw not attached to the balloon was placed through the hole in the dinner container.

Preparing the STEM Activities

The experiment space we used for our experiment was an under the bed plastic box with water. If you have baby pool or even a larger pool, your boat will travel much farther than our boat did.

We conducted our experiment outside. If you choose to do your STEM activities inside you will want to place plastic tablecloth under your plastic experiment container.

We filled the plastic box about half with water. (I wanted it to be light enough for me to dump the water out of the box when we were finished.)

Ready for the Tricky Part

The end of the balloon was pinched shut after it was inflated. Despite pinching the end, air did start to slip out of the balloon.

Here are some ways we tried to keep the air in the balloon:

Hold a finger over the end of the straw.
Place tape over the end of the straw.
Bend the straw to create a kink in it.
Pinch the balloon above where the balloon meets the straw.

We ultimately decide the pinching above the straw worked best for us. You may decide one of these other ways works best for you.

Going Forwards and Backwards

It was really fun to learn that the boat will go forwards if you place boat down with the straw in the back. When you turn the boat around, it will travel backwards.

Watching the boat being propelled by air either way is really fun!

Here are some more STEM activities:

Planting Grass Words

Creating Moon Buggy Prints

Creating Plastic Egg Parachutes

STEM Fun- Making Waves in a Plastic Bottle

June 18, 2016 By Deirdre

We are having the best time creating STEM experiments in plastic bottles. Earlier this summer we made a LEGO man sink and float and an Olympic shot put catapult. Making waves in a plastic is third plastic bottle science post! Kids can create the making waves bottle and make observations about what happens when waves form. (It is so cool!)

This STEM activity has simple directions for creating the making waves bottle and how to explore it. You can leave the creation and exploration areas of this activity more open ended if you like. It will open the way for this to be more of a STEM activity.

Making Waves Plastic Bottle

Supplies

Blue food coloring
Vegetable oil
Water
Plastic bottle (We used an old peanut jar to make our making waves bottle.)
Coral Reef Animals

Creating the Making Waves Bottle

Fill 1/3 of the plastic bottle with vegetable oil.
Fill the remaining 2/3 of the bottle with water. We didn’t fill our bottle to the brim, but you can if you like.
Add blue food coloring to the water. You will only need a few drops.
Drop in your plastic ocean animals. We used two fish from the coral reef set.
Screw the lid on tightly.

Exploring the Making Waves Bottle

Start by laying the bottle on its side. Watch what happens to the oil and the water.
Then try slowing tilting the bottle back and forth while holding it with two hands. Kids will notice that the oil and water don’t mix. They may also notice that one of the liquids forms waves and one does not.
Talk about how water moves due to energy being passed through molecules.
Also, talk about how the gravitational pull of the moon on our planet’s water.
Listen carefully to each observation your children makes. Take a moment to record what they notice and questions they have about gravity.
Do further research on gravity and waves in the books Move It!: Motion Forces and You, Gravity Is a Mystery , The Book of Waves: Form and Beauty on the Ocean, W is for Waves: An Ocean Alphabet .

You will find more ocean related activities on my Ocean board on Pinterest.

Gravity for Kids Experiment – Effects of Speed

June 16, 2016 By Deirdre

This gravity for kids experiment is so much fun! My son keeps taking it out to explore over and over again. I bet your kids will want to do this gravity for kids themselves and watch other kids do it. I think it may have something to with the spinning eraser and the blurry image that is created while conducting the experiment. My son loved our ball drop experiment that spun too!

What effect speed has on the gravitational pull on an object is the key concept in explored in this experiment. Kids may think they know what happens when things move slowly and quickly. This experiment will either clarify what they know or cause them to think about gravity in new ways.

Putting Together the Gravity for Kids Device

Supplies:

Spool
String or Twine
Flat Eraser
Large Paper Clip

Directions for Creating the Gravity for Kids Device

Wrap on end of length of string or twine around a paper clip a number of times. Then tie the end of your string to the paper clip.
Thread the other end of the spool.
Then attach the string to the eraser by wrapping it around it and then tying off the string.

Conducting the Experiment

Hold the device by the spool with the eraser hanging down toward the ground.
Slowly start spinning the spool over your heard.
Gradually make it go faster and faster.
As the speed increases the eraser will rise up and the string will blur.

What is happening?

The string is like gravity. It pulls the eraser toward the spool. This is called centripetal force. When the eraser goes faster, it moves up and away from its center.

If you like this gravity for kids experiment, you will want to check out these experiments too.

Olympic Shot Put Catapult

Exploring Inertia with LEGO

Building a Pool Noodle Airplane

Olympic Shot Put Catapult Design for Kids

June 8, 2016 By Deirdre

The shot put is one of the Olympic spots that most children have probably never seen. It isn’t often featured on television. Why not introduce your children to the shot put by creating a catapult that will fling a shot put across your yard. Our shot put is features a bucket that is hand shaped. The arm is made from an old paintbrush. The payload or shot put is a series of balls. I wanted my son to experiment with a wide variety of balls to see which one would travel the farthest. Adding the ball element made this a STEM experiment. Actually I guess I should call it an Olympic STEM experiment.

Creating Your Catapult Design

You start this experiment by tracing someone’s hand onto a piece of cardboard. We used cardboard from an empty cracker box. It was a little bit thicker than the cardboard from a cereal boxes.

Then we cut out the hand with sharp scissors. I want to use scissors that would easily cut through the cardboard.

After the hand was cut out we traced the outside edge of the and and drew on fingers.

A small slit was cut from the wrist up about three inches. The right and left sides of the wrist were overlapped and taped. This made the hand cup. The cupped area would be where the shot put would fly from.

The hand was then attached to a paint stick with duct tape. You can try a variety of types of tape is you like. We have found that duct tape does a great job for us.

The fulcrum or support for the hand and the brush is an old peanut jar. We filled the jar with pebbles to keep it from rolling around.

Setting up the Catapult

The hand and brush were placed on the jar so the hand was resting on the ground and the end of the brush is up in the air.

Then you have select what type of ball you can to try to fling.

Here are some types of balls you may want to try:

Marbles
Bouncy balls
Wooden spheres of balls
Rubber balls
Golf balls

You can try each of the balls to see which one will fly the farthest.

Actually Testing Out the Catapult Design

You can try moving the paint stick forwards and backward on the plastic jar to see what placement will allow the ball to fly the highest.
You can try placing your finger or fingers in different places over the jar. (Holding your fingers over the jar will keep the hand and stick from flying into the air with the ball.
You can try hitting the end of the paint stick in various places to see what different it makes in the distance the ball flies.

As you can see there are many variable that can be tested out while conducting this experiment. I just know your kids are going to have fun trying to get the ball to fly the farthest.

This is part of an Olympic series being hosted by KC Edventures. Please stop by and check out a list of all the activities.

LEGO Building- Exploring Inertia with a Moving Platform

June 3, 2016 By Deirdre

This challenge has two distinct tasks. The first is to use your LEGO building skills to build a simple platform on wheels. We are calling this task “Building a Moving Platform”. The second task is to use the cart and a few household items to explore just how inertia works.

Let me start by explaining inertia:

Inertia -a property of matter by which something that is not moving remains still and something that is moving goes at the same speed and in the same direction until another thing or force affects it. (This definition comes from Merriam-Webster.)

LEGO Building Challenge

The challenge is to build a moving platform that is large enough to hold a small plastic storage container.

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Supplies

Four sets of LEGO wheels
2×4 bricks both thick and thin to mount the wheels on
10×10 LEGO building plate
40-50 LEGO bricks (1×2, 1×3, 1×4, or 1×8)

Directions

Start by building a wall around the perimeter of the base plate. You can make it taller than the three brick height we did if you want to.

Place the wheels underneath the base plate near each of the base plate’s corners mounted on 2×4 bricks.

Exploring Inertia

Supplies

Moving platform from the LEGO building challenge
Marbles
Plastic storage container

Directions

Place the storage container inside the wall on your moving platform from the LEGO challenge.
Place the marbles inside the plastic storage container. Try to spread them apart.
Push the moving platform gently and notice what happens.
Stop the moving platform by pulling it towards you and take a moment to think about what happened.

What did you see?

Did the marbles stay in place until the back of the container tapped them?

Did the marbles keep moving when the moving platform stopped?

If you like this LEGO building and science experiment, here are some more activities you might like:

Graphing Ocean Animals with LEGO

Making LEGO Man Sink and Float

Awesome LEGO Brick Ice Excavation

Ocean Life Building Directions and Ocean Mat

Magnetic LEGO Travel Tray with Challenge Cards

LEGO Sight Word Sensory Bottle

Build LEGO Mini Star Wars Ships

Mini Figure Coloring Pages

Valentine Ideas – Graphing with Candy Hearts and LEGO

LEGO Owl Building Directions

LEGO Count and Move ( Free Printable)

Cool Science – Make LEGO Man Sink & Float

June 1, 2016 By Deirdre

If heavier objects sink and lighter objects float, then just want did we do to make the LEGO sink and float. Well, he didn’t sink and float at the same time! There were times when he floated near the top of the plastic container and other times he sank. We had fun exploring this cool science challenge.ain the Cool Science

When we squeezed water filled bottle that the LEGO man was in, we pushed water into the straw he is wearing on his back. This made our LEGO man heavier. The density went up and that made him go down.

When we let go of the bottle, the pressure of the air in the straw pushed the water out of the straw. The LEGO man was less dense and so he floated or bobbed back to the top of the bottle.

How Did We Get Our LEGO Man Ready for the Experiment

Supplies

LEGO man
Large paperclip
Fishing line
Small Washer
Plastic container with a large mouth (We used an old peanut container.)

First cut a bendy straw so that we had about 3 inches on either side of the bendy section.

Then slide the straw over the two ends of the paper clip.

Next we tied the straw onto the paper clip to the LEGO man with fishing line.

Then we tied a small washer to the rounded end of the paper clip. The washer added just enough weight to the LEGO man. It helped him floated just above the bottom of the container.

Conducting the Cool Science Sink or Float Experiment

We placed the LEGO man with a straw and paper clip backpack and a washer into the plastic container filled with cold water.

Then we screwed the lid on tightly.

Next we squeezed the plastic container with one or two hand. ( I used one hand and JDaniel needed two hands)

The LEGO Man sometimes slowly and other times quickly shot up in the plastic container.

Hint: We tried this experiment with warm water and the LEGO man sometimes did the opposite actions. You may want to try water of different temperatures too. It didn’t happen every time. I wonder why?

Here are some more cool science experiments with LEGO:

LEGO Groundhog Shadow Experiment

Preschool Science Experiment- How Long will a LEGO Boat Float

Kid’s Science Activity – Planting and Growing Grass Words

April 20, 2016 By Deirdre

Kid’s science experiments that tie into other learning areas are twice as fun. This planting and growing grass words activity weaves science and words study together. Children are given the opportunity to grow words or letters using grass seed. We grew the word grow. You could have your children grow other plant related words like grass, seed, or plant. Younger children could focus on arranging the grass seed into the first letter of their first or last name. No matter what words or letters you decide to focus on your children will love creating, growing and even trimming during the process of conducting this kid’s science activity.

Kid’s Science Activity with Words

Gathering Supplies

Metal tray or container wide enough to contain the word or letter your children will plant
Card displaying the word or letter your children will be creating
Potting soil
Grass seed
Chopstick or pencil
Water

Creating the Words in Seeds

Kid's Science - Planting and Growing Grass Words

The grass has been thinned out some so the letters can more easily be seen.

It is really important that your children know what the word or letter looks like. They will be trying to replicate it in the potting soil. Seeing the word in print will help them as they draw the letter or letters. A simple index card displaying the the letter or letters will do. Your children can create the card or you can create it for them.

The next step is to fill the container with potting soil. The deeper your soil the deeper your children can draw the letter. Our container has about 4 inches of dirt.

Then your children will need to draw the letters of the selected word or the letter of their name in the soil with a chopstick or pencil. We created the word on the surface of the dirt and then carved each of the letters deeper into the soil after we knew it looked the way we wanted it to.

The grass seed was then added to this kid’s science activity space. They will want to add enough seed to clearly define each letter. (We could have used more seed on our letter “R”.)

Finally a thin layer of dirt was added to cover the grass seed and the soil was lightly watered. (We watered the grass a little everyday.)

It took a number of days for the seed to sprout. It was so exciting to see the letters of the word grow sprout out of the soil. Once it started to grow, we then had to trim the letters. When the grass got too tall, we couldn’t see the word. That was an added benefit. Trimming the grass was actually a lot of fun. (It is also a great fine motor activity.)