Over the weekend, when both Jim and I were under the weather, we walked into the kitchen to find this:   Yes, those are paper clips—in water—in a spice jar that up until rather recently held dried marjoram. Gareth was behind me, proudly saying, “Look at my experiment! When I get bigger I am going to be a scientist!” I was most curious to understand the workings of his experiment, so grabbing a pen and paper, here’s the explanation direct from a 4-year-old: “I putted sink water in, and then cold water in from there [pointing at...

Today we did an experiment about air movement, in which we tried to blow out a candle with various items between us and the candle. The original idea for the experiment came from here. This is an excellent experiment for getting your kids to use their powers of observation and deduction.  The experiment uses common household objects. Here’s what you need: a candle and lighter assorted household objects of various shapes. I had three broad types: cylinders (cocoa can, wine bottle, rootbeer can); solid and non-round (cereal boxes, storage containers, piggy banks, toys); and those...

OK. I know you’ve seen this sort of experiment before; it appears in just about every “Simple Science Experiments for Kids” book out there. I found a simple version of it at funology.com, and found myself curious. “Note the different reactions” it said, to combining vinegar, lemon juice, and lime juice with baking soda. “What different reactions?” I wondered. They’re all acids, so they’ll all do exactly the same thing and make bubbles. Big deal. Well—I was wrong! There are differences. We started the experiment with 5 acids, as we had a lingering bottle of balsamic vinegar in the...

Jim saw this simple experiment the other day when he was watching Beakman’s World (a kid’s science TV show) with the boys. It is quite counter-intuitive and really simple to do. All you need are 2 drinking straws and a glass of water (we used juice). Begin by putting one drinking straw into the beverage and having the child take a sip. Nothing unusual here. Now tell the child you are going to give them a second straw, but instead of putting it in the beverage, you want them to put it outside...