If you are a parent or teacher, you need some cool science projects to keep your kids occupied. And one of the best ways to keep kids occupied is the science experiments you can do at home! The good news is not all science experiments require expensive lab equipment or dangerous chemicals, and you can do lots of cool projects with regular household items.
What are some good science projects for kids?
The James Dyson Foundation and Dyson engineers designed twenty-two cool DIY science projects that you can do with everyday household items, including balloons, plastic bottles, dish soap, and eggs. And I have curated this big collection of easy science experiments that anybody can try, and kids will love them!
If you need more projects, you can also check our “22 Unique Homeschool Engineering Projects Ideas.”
Write your secret message in an invisible ink solution. Lemon juice is an organic substance that reacts with oxygen in the surrounding air, oxidizes, and turns brown. By placing the paper right next to the lamp, we speed up the oxidization process. The heat from the lamp causes the chemical bonds to break down....
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 1 hour
Create multi-colored flowers. Plants need a transport system to move food, water, and minerals around. Two things combine to move water through plants – transpiration and cohesion. Water evaporating from the leaves (transpiration) draws water up the plant's stem to replace what is lost. This works in the same way as sucking on a straw. Water that evaporates from the leaves "pulls" (cohesion) other water behind it up to fill the space left by the evaporating water....
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 16 hours
Create a big soapy marshmallow out of Ivory soap®. Ivory soap® floats because it has air pumped into it during manufacturing. When the air inside the soap heats up, the air expands and reacts with the water inside. The expanding gases push on the softened soap, creating foam. This effect is a demonstration of Charles’ Law. Charles’ Law states that as the temperature of a gas increases, so does its volume....
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 1 hour
Make your lava lamp. Oil is hydrophobic – it will not mix with water – even if you try to shake the bottle. The Alka-Seltzer® tablet reacts with the water to make tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide lighter than water. They attach themselves to the blobs of colored water, causing them to float to the surface. When the bubbles pop, the colored blobs sink back to the bottom of the bottle....
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 3 hours
Make raisins dance up and down in a glass of soda. Raisins have a higher density than the liquid in the glass, so they sink to the bottom. Carbon dioxide bubbles attach themselves to the raisins, increasing their volume while adding little to their mass. With greater volume, the raisin displaces more fluid. This causes the water to exert greater buoyant force, pushing the raisins upwards. Once the raisins reach the top of the glass, the carbon dioxide escapes, and...
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 2 hours
Move pepper away from you without touching it. Water bulges typically up a bit. You can see this by looking at a raindrop or filling a glass slightly over the rim – the water will not spill out. When soap is added to water, surface tension is lowered. The water tries to spread out. As the top of the water flattens out, the pepper on the surface is carried to the edge of the bowl. In the cosmetics industry, various...
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 2 hours
Create your invisible fire extinguisher. The mixture of baking soda and vinegar creates carbon dioxide. CO2 is heavier than air, so it sits at the bottom of the glass. When you tip up the glass, the CO2 comes out and suffocates the candle....
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 2 hours
Make a paper clip float on water. The paper clip is held afloat by the surface tension of the water. Water molecules are polar, so the molecules pull on each other. This creates tension – like a thin, flexible membrane on the surface – which helps hold the paper clip afloat. The tissue paper allows you to gently lower the paper clip onto the water without breaking the surface tension. Insects such as water striders use water tension to appear...
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 1 hour
Make a barometer and predict the weather. As the air is sealed inside the jar, any changes to the air pressure outside the jar will direct the movement of the balloon rubber. As the outside air pressure increases, the rubber will be forced down into the jar. The straw pivoting on the glass will rise upward. The opposite is true when the pressure decreases....
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 3 hours
Measure the speed of light using chocolate and a microwave oven. Microwaves work by creating standing waves inside the microwave oven. The water molecules in the chocolate try to align themselves with the rapidly changing standing wave, producing heat. The distance between the two melted spots is half a wavelength. You can now calculate the speed of light because speed = wave length x frequency....
- Source: Dyson
- Duration: 2 hours
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