Not your usual experiment, this is a book: “The League of Scientists” is a young adult fiction book by Andy Kaiser (the creator of Digital Bits Science Lab).

Equipment needed:

The League of Scientists is available here: http://www.LeagueOfScientists.com

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

The League of Scientists is a group of smart kids who love science. They use their knowledge and critical thinking skills to solve seemingly-supernatural mysteries.

One of the components of the book is the mystery aspect, and not just the “main” mystery. In most chapters, there is a puzzle. The solution to the puzzle involves the application of science or critical thinking. The book is intended to give science education (and scientific applications – something you don’t always get from such fiction) while still giving kids a good story and characters.

This “experiment” is a little different than usual. We’ll take a break from the usual Science Lab experiment to give a quick review of Elementeo, a card game that can be used as an educational tool to introduce basic chemistry concepts. It’s one of those rare games with fun gameplay as well as education.

Equipment needed:

An Elementeo board game, available at http://www.elementeo.com

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

In addition to the comprehensive instruction book, the game contents are what you see here:

As the box says, Elementeo is intended for “Ages 9-99″. It actually works for children even younger, as long as they understand certain basic game-playing aspects. It’s intended for 2-6 players.

The skill level required is also adjustable: there are 5 different game variants. If you want to play the more difficult versions, those versions add complexity to the more simple games.

The core game, a part of each variant, is simple: each team (or each player) has a certain number of “electrons”. Your goal is to bring your opponent’s electron count to zero. The game variants and difficulty give you different ways of doing that. The cards themselves represent mystical, mythical creatures andtechniques fighting it out on a battlefield.

This is primarily a card-playing game, like the collectible card games for “Magic: The Gathering” or “Pokemon“. However, Elementeo isn’t collectable – you’re given everything you need to play all variants of the game.

The cards look like this:

As you read the text on the cards, you’ll see that some is “flavor text” – something funny or interesting to read about the card in question. But the rest of the cards’ contents is information. Some of this information is used to play the game. Some is information about the element or compound in question.

For those who don’t know chemistry, the Elementeo card game educates - it describes basic chemistry concepts from mixing elements to make compounds, to the fun of medieval alchemy and nuclear fusion. (Alchemy and fusion are the themes of the two most difficult game variants.)

For those who know chemistry, you’ll find the Elementeo card game pays exacting and interesting attention to detail. Examine the two cards pictured above. In the lower-left of each card, you’ll see a symbol representing that card’s “power”. Black rods joining the circles indicate a positive oxidation state, and white rods indicate a black oxidation state. There is little or no gameplay reason to have this information on the card. This is an indicator of the attention to detail and love of designing the game by Elementeo’s creator, Anshul Samar. He went out of his way to go beyond the gameplay and make the game interesting, going beyond the rulebook. This gives Elementeo additional enjoyment, education, and repeat playability.

As the game manual says, Elementeo is not meant to replace chemistry lessons or teaching materials, but hopefully will suppliment them in a fun way. At a meta-level, Elementeo also represents chemistry itself: it successfully combines the gameplay elements of education and fun. This compound is very satisfying.

Description: Dissolved copper can be plated onto a metal surface using electricity. Learn how electroplating works.

Equipment needed:

Copper Sulfate. This is one of the most soluble copper compounds, it makes bright blue crystals and dissolves fairly easily in water. You can buy it in hardware stores in several forms, the form I found was Roebic Root Killer (used to clear roots out of sewers and septic systems).

Click the photo to view the larger-sized picture.

A small DC power supply.  A “wall-wart” power adaptor like this one works fine.  I expect that pretty much everyone has at least one or two of these around, orphaned when the electronic gadget that it went with broke down. This power supply came from . . . from . . . well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what it came from.  All I know is that, whatever it was supposed to provide power to, we don’t have it anymore.

A couple of “alligator clips“, to put onto the wires from the power adaptor. These cost about 50 cents each at the hardware store.

Wire stripper (optional, if you’re handy with scissors)

A screwdriver, that matches the type of screws on your alligator clips.

A small plastic or glass container (something small and disposable, like a small jelly jar or a yogurt cup, is good)

A chunk of copper that will fit easily into your container, and that is thin enough to clip on an alligator clip, and long enough to stick out of the container (a piece of heavy copper wire, or a copper sheet, are both good.  You can get these at any hardware store).  This will be one electrode of your electroplating cell.

A large steel nail that is long enough to stick out of the container.  This will be your second electrode. 

A plastic or wooden stirrer for mixing the solution (a coffee stirrer or a wooden skewer are both good.  Don’t use a metal spoon to stir it, because it will plate copper onto the metal)

A multimeter, either a digital multimeter or an analog multimeter. (It’s optional, you can do the experiment without this, although it does help.)

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

First, prepare your power supply.  Cut off the end that would normally plug into the piece of electronics, and pull the two strands of wire apart. 

Strip the insulation off of the ends, and put on the alligator clips so that your power supply looks like this:

Put a spoonful of copper sulfate into the container, add water, and stir until the copper sulfate dissolves.

Put in the piece of copper and the nail, with the ends sticking up:

Now, if you have a multimeter, you can check the polarity of your power supply.  Clip the red (+) lead of your multimeter into one of the alligator clips, and the other (-) lead into the other clip.  Set your multimeter to read DC volts, and plug in the power supply.  If you get a positive reading, then you know that the power supply lead connected to your red multimeter lead is the positive lead. If you get a negative reading, swap the power supply leads and try again.

OK, now clip the POSITIVE lead of the power supply to your copper electrode, and the NEGATIVE lead to the steel nail.

If you don’t have a multimeter, just guess which one is which, we’ll be able to figure it out once we turn it on.

Carefully check to make sure that the two electrodes are not touching each other, ideally keep them about an inch apart.

And now, plug in the power supply and watch what happens over a period of about 10 minutes or so.

If the polarity is correct, then you will get metallic copper plating onto the nail, with maybe a small amount of bubbles forming on the nail as well.  Meanwhile your copper electrode will tarnish and turn dark brown or black.  If you leave it running for half an hour or so, you should get a deposit of copper something like this on the nail:

If you have the polarity backwards, then your nail will bubble vigorously, and while there may be a thin film of copper on the surface, it will never build up a significant thickness of copper. 

What’s happening here?

This is an electrolysis reaction.  What we are doing is pumping electrons into one electrode (the nail), while pulling electrons out of the other electrode (the copper).  When you add electrons to a copper sulfate solution, the copper sulfate turns to metallic copper and sulfuric acid. The metallic copper is not soluble in water, so it plates out on the electrode where we are adding electrons.

Meanwhile, at the other electrode we are pulling out electrons.  This makes the metallic copper there react with the sulfuric acid in the solution to make more copper sulfate. 
The overall effect is that copper dissolves from the copper electrode, travels over to the iron electrode, and plates out there as metallic copper.

By adding “smoothing agents” to the solution, it is possible to make the copper plate out as a smooth, shiny metal coating. Similar things can be done with other metals, like gold, silver, zinc, chromium, and nickel.  The metal coatings can be decorative, or they can protect the metal underneath from being corroded, or both.

Description:

A lot of copper mines extract copper from ore by dissolving the copper minerals with sulfuric acid, producing copper sulfate solutions. This lab is one of the ways that they use to convert the copper sulfate into copper metal. Once the copper has been made into metal, it can then be melted down to make copper products like electrical wire.

Equipment needed:

Copper Sulfate. This is one of the most soluble copper compounds, it makes bright blue crystals and dissolves fairly easily in water. You can buy it in hardware stores in several forms, the form I found was Roebic Root Killer (used to clear roots out of sewers and septic systems).

Click the photo to view the larger-sized picture.

Steel wool. Use unsoaped steel wool (the type that is used for sanding varnish), the finer the better.

A small plastic or glass container (something small and disposable, like a yogurt cup, is good)

A plastic or wooden stirrer for mixing the solution (a coffee stirrer or a wooden skewer are both good. Don’t use a metal spoon to stir it, because it will plate copper onto the metal)

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Put a spoonful of copper sulfate into the container, add water, and stir until the copper sulfate dissolves.

Tear off a piece of steel wool that is about the same volume as the copper sulfate that you added to the solution:

Put the steel wool into the copper sulfate solution. Use the stirrer to roll it around so that the solution flows through the steel wool. If you use the stirrer to pull the steel wool to the surface of the solution after about a minute, you should see that the steel wool is turning copper colored.

After about 30 minutes, the steel wool should disintegrate into a powder, while the solution changes from blue to green. If you carefully pour off the liquid, you should be able to keep the powder in the bottom.

The powder, which should be reddish-brown, is metallic copper powder. If you dry it and check its conductivity with a multimeter, it should be electrically conductive. If it were just rust from steel wool, it would not conduct electricity after it dries.

What is going on here?

We are starting with copper sulfate in solution (CuSO4), and metallic iron (Fe). It turns out that copper as metal is more stable than iron as metal, so when we put metallic iron into copper sulfate solution, the metal atoms basically switch places:

(Dissolved CuSO4) + (Metallic Fe) ==> (Dissolved FeSO4) + (Metallic Cu)

In the copper mining industry, this process is called “cementation”, and is still used by copper mines that can buy scrap iron cheaply.

Description:

A simple demonstration of electrolysis – electrocuting water to convert it into hydrogen.

Equipment Needed:

A 9-volt battery

Wire (something low-gauge and flexible is preferred, like copper wire)

Scissors

Wire stripper (optional, if you’re handy with scissors)

Tape (durable tape is required, like duct tape or electrical tape)

A glass of water

Salt

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

This experiment is a simple demonstration of electrolysis. Electrolysis is the method of breaking apart compounds into their original elements by passing an electric current through them.

Put simply, this experiment shows that if you electrocute water, you’ll get hydrogen.

First, we need to make the electric device that will make the electrolysis happen: get the 9-volt battery, your wire, the scissors and tape. Start stripping the ends of the wire. You will need two strands of wire at least six inches in length. Use the wire stripper or the scissors to strip the rubber sheath from both ends of each wire with the scissors. This will expose the wire itself:

After you’ve stripped both ends from both wires, take one wire and securely tape one stripped metal end to one terminal of the 9-volt battery. Next, do the same with the second wire – tape it to the remaining battery terminal. The result will be our electrolysis device, all ready to go:

The rest is easy:

Get your glass of water. Put a tablespoon or two of salt into it. Stir the salt to dissolve it. The water will become a little cloudy.

Get the electrolysis device. Dip both ends of the wire into the salt water.

You will immediately see bubbles start to fizzle off of one wire. (If you don’t see bubbles, then check to make sure that your wires have a good connection to the battery, and that the battery still holds a charge.)

What’s happening here? These instructions are simple do-it-yourself electrolysis: when you electrocute water (which is made of hydrogen and oxygen), the electricity breaks apart water molecules. The bubbles you see are the hydrogen from the water being released. Salt water improves the electrolysis reaction - fresh water (like in the picture above, since cloudy salt water was difficult to photograph) will still give you bubbles of hydrogen, but it won’t be as impressive as with salt water.
 

Learn about the elements and periodic table.

Equipment needed:

There’s nothing like a good visual. In this case, go to the Periodic Table website. In addition to the excellent resources on the website itself, it allows you to get more information and close-up views of the elements, including a snazzy rotating videos and 3D-interactive visuals.

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Older children will get exposure to the elements themselves, which – in the way this website presents them – are truly impressive and fun to look at. Make sure you see the periodic table placemats and 3D posters!

As the child gets older, she can learn about the elements, what makes them unique, and unique stories and characteristics about each one.