Science by Email activity archive

In recent years, Science by Email has produced a diverse range of science activities for subscribers to try at home or in the classroom. You can access them via this archive.

• 22 April 2010 | Updated 14 October 2011

Biology activities

Animals

• Wormarium - Make a viewable worm farm
• Ant trail - Explore how ants make their trails
• Be a bird spy - Try this bird watching activity
• Classifying animals - Learn about the features used to classify animals
• Squid study - Dissect a squid.

Plants

• Terra terrarium - Construct a terrarium using a soft drink bottle
• Beautiful blooms - Change the colour of lillies with food colouring
• Green plants - Investigate what makes plants green
• Watering plants - Suck up some food dye using celery
• Pollen trap - Catch pollen using a card and vaseline
• The case of the shrunken head - Demonstrate osmosis by making shrunken heads from apples.

Your body

• Balloon lung - Make a model lung using ballons
• How does an infectious disease spread? - Map the progress of germs through a population
• Delicious diarrhoea - Make edible poo
• Freak family - Compare the genes in your family
• Superglue detectives - Identify features on fingerprints.

Sense and perception

• Blind spot- Use a cross and circle to identify a blind spot in your vision
• Cipher wheel - Crack codes with a cipher wheel
• Heated confusion - Learn about how we sense temperature
• Koolchee - Play this Aboriginal ball rolling game
• Lasting colour - Create after-images in your eyes
• Little miss memories - Make false memories using a list of words
• Corner of your eye - Explore peripheral vision
• Giant camera - Make a pinhole camera using curtains
• Sound source - Locate a person using sound
• Coloured words - Investigate the 'Stroop Effect' of reading coloured words
• How does your brain taste? - Explore your tastebuds
• Mythbusting the tongue - Debunk the map of the tongue
• Looking into your eye - Learn about blood vessels and blind spots in your eyes
• How a filter works - Demonstrate how a filter changes the perceived colour of objects
• Memory - Play a game of memory using cards
• Phantom eyelids - Trick your eyes into thinking they are closed
• Touch test - Test the sensitivity of your touch
• Are you predator or prey? - Find out how binocular vision works
• Persisting illusion - Spin two images to get a complete picture
• Speed of smell - Measure the speed of a gas moving through the air
• See 3D with a stereoscope - Make a stereoscope using pictures and mirrors.

Sensory illusions

• Curved cards - Try this kidney card illusion
• A matter of perspective - Build a model of an Ames room illusion
• Lunar illusion - Find out why the Moon looks larger when closer to the horizon
• Pepper's ghost - Make an illusion using a pane of glass for reflection
• Make a mirage - Use a bottle of water to simulate how a mirage works
• Primed to listen - Learn about priming and aural illusions
• Invisible coin - Refract light
• Puzzling pendulum - Try this optical illusion using a swinging pendulum
• Swirly sight - Use a spinning spiral to create a waterfall illusion.

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