Science by Email activity archive

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Activity topics

• Chemistry
• Kitchen science
• Weather and the environment
• Biology
• Mathematics
• Electricity, magnetism and engineering
• Astronomy
• Forces
• Sense and perception

Chemistry

• Canister rocket - Use bicarb and vinegar to launch your own film canister rockets
• Chilling recipe  - Chill out with this endothermic reaction
• Coated in copper - Electroplate a metal object
• Coloured flame - Test these metals by creating colourful flames
• Ink tea - Make gall ink using iron, vinegar and tea
• Become a creature of slime - Play with polymers while making this classic borax and PVA slime
• The blue bottle experiment - This oscillating reaction changes a bottle from clear to blue and back again
• Cosmetic chemistry - Make your own soap and face mask
• Red planet - See why the Martian soil is red.

Kitchen science

• Bread - Make bread with yeast
• Burping bugs - How does temperature influence gas production in yeast
• Colour-changing cabbage - Make a pH indicator out of red cabbage
• Sedimentary crackle - Explaining sedimentary rock by making chocolate crackles
• Delicious diarrhoea - Make edible poo
• Emulsion - Make mayonaise by mixing oil and water
• How do enzymes work? - Observe enzymes in fresh vs tinned pinapple and their effect on the setting of jelly
• Ginger ale - Make this tasty beverage
• Honeycomb - How to make honeycomb 'pumice'
• Hot chocolate - Calculate the speed of light using a microwave and a chocolate bar
• The case of the shrunken head - Demonstrate osmosis by making shrunken heads from apples
• Pancake peaks - Demonstrate earth tectonics with pancakes
• Get your piece of the pie: Pi day - Measure pi using a pie!
• How to make sherbert - Explore acids and taste
• Sugar glass - Make glass from sugar and water
• Another sticky solution - Make plastic from milk
• Rocky road - Understand conglomerate rocks by making this yummy treat.

Weather and the environment

• Breathe in… Breathe out… - Show the pH change in water after blowing bubbles into it
• Why is the sky blue? Or pink? - Use powdered milk to explore the colour of the sky
• Clouds - Create clouds in a jar
• Cold front - Show how storms form using hot and cold water
• Convection - Create convection currents in water using food dye
• Not-so-green machines - Calculate your car's greenhouse gas emissions
• Earth apple - Use an apple to demonstrate the relative amount of space for human sustainability
• How much do you use? - Calculate the amount of electricity you use
• Melting ice - Demonstrate that melting icebergs do not change water levels
• Pizza box solar oven - Make a solar oven out of a pizza box and foil
• Solar water purifier - Distill water using the Sun
• Build a model wind turbine - Make a model wind turbine
• Where the river meets the sea - Float an egg between layers of fresh and salty water
• Turbidity test - Use a secchi disk to test turbidity
• Hand-made paper - Make recycled paper
• Critters in the creek - Explore the water ways
• Tornado tube - Create a vortex inside a bottle
• Swirly bottle - Make fluid currents in a jar visible.

Biology

• Build a biojar - Show the carbon cycle using a biodome jar
• Be a bird spy - Try this bird watching activity
• Classifying animals - Learn about the features used to classify animals
• Terra terrarium - Construct a terrarium using a soft drink bottle
• Wormarium - Make a viewable worm farm
• Ant trail - Explore how ants make their trails
• Beautiful blooms - Change the colour of lillies with food colouring
• Green plants - Investigate what makes plants green
• Natural selection: playing rock, paper, scissors - Use the game scissor paper rock to demonstrate natural selection
• Squid study - Dissect a squid
• Banana DNA - Extract DNA from bananas
• Double helix - Make a double helix model
• Freak family - Compare the genes in your family
• Watering plants - Suck up some food dye using celery
• Superglue detectives - Identify features on fingerprints
• How does an infectious disease spread? - Map the progress of germs through a population
• Pollen trap - Catch pollen using a card and vaseline
• Balloon lung - Make a model lung using ballons.

Mathematics

• Dice roll - Roll a dice and find out about chance
• Dino speed - Calculate the speed of a running dinosaur
• Coin check - Describe binary code, the language of computers
• Fair coin flip - Explain encryption using square roots
• Bloody trigonometry - Use trig to calculate an angle of impact
• How GPS works - Use triangulation to see how GPS satellites work
• Impossible hole - Cut a hole large enough to step through in a card
• Konigsberg - Explore networking by trying this seven bridges puzzle
• Pentominoes - Arrange tiles of pentominoes
• Make a pi necklace for Pi Day - Make a necklace which codes the number Pi in beads
• Hand topology - Use string looped around your wrist to explore topology
• How to measure the weight of a car - Measure the weight of a car by doing calculations.

Electricity, magnetism and engineering

• Ancient engines - Construct a jet engine from a drink can
• A ball bearing model - Make a model of ball bearings using tins and marbles
• Charge your light bulbs - Light up a fluorescent lightbulb using static electricity
• Glow worm - Make a basic electrical circuit with light through a cardboard bug
• Electronic door bell - Make a ringing door bell circuit
• Franklins bells - Use the static electricity from an old television to make a paper clip swing
• Lemon battery challenge- Make a battery using lemons
• Motor madness - Make a homopolar motor with just a battery, magnets and copper wire
• Spaghetti bridges - Test a bridge made from spaghetti
• Zap! - Create static electricity
• Harbour bridge - Construct strong shapes out of toothpicks and lollies
• Jitterbug - Make a bristle-bot using a vibrating motor and a toothbrush head
• You've got mail! - Make medieval chain mail
• Magnetic slime - Creat a simple magnetic fluid
• Magnetic rocket - Make a Gaussian rifle using magnets
• Magnets - Observe the magnetic field lines of a magnet
• Finding your way - Magnetise a pin to find the poles.

Astronomy

• Eclipse - Observe a solar eclipse safely
• Blowing up the universe - Explore the expansion of space-time using a balloon
• Finding south - Find south using the Southern Cross
• The reasons for seasons 1 - Look into the relationship between axial tilt and seasons
• The reasons for seasons 2 - Look into the relationship between axial tilt and seasons
• Honey, I shrank the solar system - Make a scale model of the solar system
• Spinning stars - Use two masses to show how wobbling stars are used to detect planets
• Sundial - Build a sundial
• Timing the stars - Observe sidereal time by comparing the position of a star on sequential nights
• Make a telescope - Investigate lenses and magnification.

Forces

• Heavy air - Show that air has weight using candle and jar
• Balloon rocket - Make a rocket from a ballon and straw
• Standing on air - Stand on a table propped on balloons without the balloons popping
• The Bernoulli Principle - Use a ping-pong ball, funnel and two balloons to demonstrate Bernoulli's Principle
• Bottled balloon - Test a friend's lungs with this neat trick
• Corrugated paper - Try folding pleats into card. Will it make it stronger?
• Collide-a-ball - Demonstrate kinetic energy transfer in bouncing balls
• Crushing can - Use air pressure to crush a can
• Make a 'density-o-meter' - Compare densities of various fluids and objects
• Detergent boat - Use detergent to power a mini-boat
• Why is it so? - Suck a hard boiled egg into a bottle
• Friction frog - Make a climbing frog to demonstrate friction
• Underwater fountain - Use coloured hot water to make a pretty fountain
• Baffling balloons - Use two balloons to confuse your friends
• Pneumatics and hydraulics - Make a jumping frog using a syringe
• Squashed air - Explore the effect of gas compression on temperature
• Runaway bottle - Make your own 'elastic powered' vehicle
• Iron sucks - Watch water rise as iron rusts
• Spinning on cue - Make a cue ball stop using backspin
• Falling bodies experiment - Demonstrate the effect of mass on the speed of falling
• Rocket science - Make a rocket out of insulation tube and a rubber band
• Rotational inertia - Explore inertia by using a weighted stick
• Rubber band racers - Make a 'pull string' rolling vehicle using rubber bands
• Siphons suck - Explore how siphons work
• Squeeze rocket - Launch a paper rocket by squeezing a bottle
• Tornado tube - Create a vortex inside a bottle
• This is a hold up - Demonstrate air pressure using a card and glass of water
• Surface tension - Show surface tension with pepper and detergent
• Teabag rocket - Burn a teabag and watch it fly.

Sense and perception

• A matter of perspective - Build a model of an Ames room illusion
• Blind spot- Use a cross and circle to identify a blind spot in your vision
• Cipher wheel - Crack codes with a cipher wheel
• Curved cards - Try this kidney card illusion
• Heated confusion - Learn about how we sense temperature
• Koolchee - Play this Aboriginal ball rolling game
• Lasting colour - Create after-images in your eyes
• Make a mirage - Use a bottle of water to simulate how a mirage works
• Little miss memories - Make false memories using a list of words
• 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
• Corner of your eye - Explore peripheral vision
• Primed to listen - Learn about priming and aural illusions
• Invisible coin - Refract light
• 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
• Puzzling pendulum - Try this optical illusion using a swinging pendulum
• Swirly sight - Use a spinning spiral to create a waterfall illusion
• 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.

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