Internet sure made our life a lot more easier. From paying bills to booking tickets online, all at our fingertips. So today, why don’t we take advantage of the internet to do something more interesting. Here, we have assembled some interesting science experiments for kids, which are easily available over the internet. The following science experiments are intended for fun as they are pretty basic in nature and can be performed without complex lab chemicals and apparatus.
Table of Contents
1. Dry Ice Bubble
Take a large bowl with a lip around the top, fill it with dry ice and then pour some water in it. Now, what you will have is a cauldron like figure, real spooky. Next, take a piece of a cloth soak it in a soapy mixture, which you can make by mixing water with some dishwashing liquid. Now, run it around the lip of the bowl before dragging it across, then just wait for it.
What you see is a result of sublimation. Dry ice is carbon dioxide in its solid form. At much cold temperatures, dry ice changes directly from solid to gaseous state, this process is known as sublimation. When water is added to the dry ice it accelerates the sublimation process, creating clouds of fog that fill up your bubble until the pressure becomes too much and the bubble explodes.
2. How Much Sugar Is in a Can of Soda?
Do you know how much sugar do you intake while consuming an average can of coke or any soda soft drink? Yes of course, it’s written on it, but with this cool experiment you can actually see how much of a sweet tooth you really are.
3. Stab a Potato with a Straw
Can you punch a hole in a potato with a common drinking straw? Just try it. Take a straw and try to stab the potato. Can’t do it, don’t worry, we will tell you how to it with this simple experiment. Hold the straw once more, but this time cover the rear or upper end of it with your fingers then punch it. Covering the top of the straw with your fingers actually traps the air inside which makes the straw much stronger while stabbing the potato.
4. Chocolate Experiment
Here is a really easy and tasty experiment for kids to try. Take a piece of a chocolate put it on a clean plate (from which you can eat it later) and then place outside in shade. Now what you all have to do is to record the time the chocolate takes to melt or become soft.
Try this again in a different spot with direct sunlight. You can also record the temperatures at which the chocolates melted in different places. This experiment can give you a better understanding about the human body heat. Don’t know how, well keep the chocolate in your mouth and you will know it.
5. Homemade Butter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jhCv5AJ1zI
Who doesn’t like butter. Well, in this video you will not only learn how to make your own butter out of soured cream, but also gain knowledge about the fermentation process. You will just need some soured cream from the market and a couple of empty containers.
6. Vinegar Volcano
To perform this experiment you will just need some baking soda, vinegar and a medium sized container. In that container, place the baking soda, then gently pour some vinegar on top of it. Scoosh! What’s happening here is a reaction caused due to the interaction of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and acetic acid (vinegar).
When these two come in contact with each other, they form a very unstable carbonic acid, which instantly breaks apart into water and carbon dioxide and creates the fizzing as it escapes the solution. You can make your volcano more impressive, but it will need some craft skills.
7. Egg in the Bottle Experiment
This classic experiment never gets boring. What you need is just a couple of hard boiled eggs and a glass bottle to perform this.
8. Dissolving Sugar
Do you know that cold water has low dissolving rates than hot water? Well, you can test it. Take two clear glasses, fill one with cold water and other with warm water, but ensure that you have the same quantity of water in both the glasses.
The reason why the hot water dissolves more is, it has faster moving molecules which are spread further apart than the molecules in the cold water. With bigger gaps between the molecules in the hot water, more sugar molecules can fit in between.
9. The non-popping balloon
What happens when you place an inflated balloon near the fire? Kaboom right. But there is a way that you can stop the balloon from exploding. Instead of filling the balloon with just air put some water in it first, then inflate it by blowing air inside. Then see what happens next. Here is a good visual aid for this experiment.
10. Carbon Dioxide Sandwich
With Steve Spangler, learn how to make sandwich bombs. Yes, you heard it right ‘sandwich bombs’. A second grade experiment with added creativity. And you know that a partnership of vinegar and baking soda will never stop to amaze you. Watch the video and see what we are talking about.
11. Diet Coke & Mentos Explosion
This classic experiment needs no introduction. While there are many theories why the eruption happens after putting small mentos in a big bottle of diet coke, who knows you might find a new theory behind this while performing it.
12. Invisible Ink
One way or the other, many of us actually fantasize about being a secret agent someday. So lets do something secretive today, just like a real agent. Just grab a lemon, squeeze out some juice out of it and mix it with some drops of water in a bowl. Then use a cotton bud to write something on a piece of a paper after dipping it into the lemon solution.
Tadaaa… your invisible ink is now ready. After a couple of minutes, when the lemon solution on the paper dries out your text will become completely invisible. The lemon juice and water solution makes it very hard to notice anything on a piece of paper, but as an organic substance lemon juice oxidizes and turns brown whenever it is heated. And that’s how you can reveal your secret message.
13. Science of the Olympics
This video featuring Steven Spangler is jam-packed with fascinating science experiments that one may perform right at home. The experiment demonstrates how air flow and resistance affect the speed and performance of a ball in the air or a relay runner on the track (Bernoulli’s principle)
14. Electric Pickle
The video shows you the amazing glowing pickle trick. It shows pickle is a good conductor of electricity, and sometimes cooking and science just goes together.
15. Cabbage Acid Base Indicator
Do you have a PH paper to measure the acid or base level of any substance? No, don’t worry. You just need a cabbage to do that. But how can a cabbage work as a PH and determine whether a solution is acidic or basic? Well, in this interesting experiment you are going to learn how to create a simple, colorful indicator that students can use in their any acid base chemistry experiments.
16. How to Make a Lemon Battery
Battery out of a lemon? Watch how to do it and find out what it means.
17. Static Electricity and Water
Here’s a fun science experiment for kids who wants to learn about static electricity. To do it, you just need a PVC pipe or a comb and a running water tap. Turn on the water in a way that only a steady and narrow stream passes through it. Now rub the PVC pipe or comb on your hair then just slowly move that pipe near the stream of water (without touching it) while closely observing the proceedings.
We know that positive and negative charges are attracted to each other. So what’s happening here is that negatively charged particles or electrons which you transferred from your hair to the PVC pipe or comb, after getting closer to the stream of water attracts the positive particles present in the water, causing the stream to bend towards the pipe.
18. Inertia Experiment
“An object at rest stays at rest.” With the help of some common materials you can learn about the inertia.
19. Explaining Momentum
Momentum means P=MV. Is that confusing? Do not worry, you can easily understand the basic concept of momentum with the simple experiment shown in the video.
20. Understanding Energy
Energy cannot be created or be destroyed, it just changes form, from one to another. In this video, Bill Nye introduces the concept of energy with a bowling ball, a piece of glass, and a barbecue.
21. Surface Tension
Can you make a paper-clip and a coin float in water?
22. CO2 is Heavier Than Air
With the help of some basic household ingredients, you can prove that carbon dioxide is heavier than the air. This experiment illustrates the weight of carbon dioxide when compared to other gases in the atmosphere. Parents, teachers and adults can use this perfect experiment for introducing their students to the concept of greenhouse gases and global warming.
23. Where Do Ocean Currents Come From?
How do ocean current occur? Simple, salinity.
24. Egg Bubbles
Place an egg in a bowl with some hot water in it. After sometime you will notice many tiny bubbles emerging on the egg shell which eventually bubble their way to the surface. An egg contains a small air pocket at its larger end between the shell and egg white. When the air is trapped inside, this small pocket begins to heat up. It expands and tries to find a way out of the shell, but how does it escape?
25. Light, Color & Heat
Dark surfaces such as the black painted roof absorb more heat than the lighter ones such as the white painted roof. You can actually test it out with just some kitchen stuffs and papers. Take two glasses filled with water at room temperature.
Next, cover one glass with white piece of cloth and the second one with a black cloth and place them somewhere they can get some direct sunlight. After a good half and hour, measure the temperatures of the water, the glass with the black paper around it should be hotter than the other.
26. Walking Water Experiment
A kid demonstrates color mixing absorption by making a fun rainbow.
27. Energy Transfer
Take a ball of two different sizes, lets go with a basket ball and a tennis ball. Now, hold the smaller ball above the larger ball and drop them in the same manner in a same time. Here is what you are going to observe. When the basket ball touches the ground, the tennis ball should bounce off the basketball and fly much higher into the air. This simple experiment can give you a clear idea about an important characteristic of energy.
When the two balls hit each other just after the basketball hit the ground, a lot of the kinetic energy in the larger basketball is transferred to the much smaller tennis ball, causing it to rise above in the air. While you held the balls in the air before dropping them they had another type of energy called ‘potential energy’, the balls gained this through the effort it took you to lift the balls up.
28. Spinning Bucket
What happens when you move a bucket filled with water in a circular motion in a manner that it reaches above your head in an upside down position? Let’s try it out. Take a bucket, filled it with water till it reaches the halfway, then after moving to a much spacious place (that’s important) start swinging the bucket with your extended arm.
Start it by your side, then go towards the sky and back to the ground in a circular motion, just make sure that you spin it fast enough. Amazing, isn’t. What you experience is a perfect example of Newton’s first law of motion, that an object will continue in a straight line unless an outside force (in this case your arm) acts upon it.
29. Gravity Free Water
Take a piece of cardboard and a glass full of water, and what you are going to do with it is, cover it and make sure that no air enters the glass as you hold onto the cardboard. Now, turn the glass upside down. If all goes well to plan, then the cardboard and water should stay put, defying gravity! But,how?
Read: 12 Weird Diseases That Science Failed To Explain
Here is the explanation. With lack of air inside the glass, air pressure from outside the glass is much greater than the pressure of the water inside the glass. The extra air pressure manages to hold the cardboard in place, keeping your water where it should be, or should not be, in this situation, inside the glass.
30. Light Bending & Bouncing
Read: 15 Awesome Inventions Inspired By Science Fiction
Do you know why light bends through a lens? Why the light changes direction every time it goes from air to plastic, and then again when it goes from plastic to air. If not, then famous Bill Nye has a perfect demonstration for you. The reason behind this is that when the light go through a plastic it actually slows down, but speeds up again after coming out in the air.
