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.

Equipment needed:

A shoebox

Black duct tape or black paint

A tape measure

Wax paper

Scissors

A heavy blanket

Rubber bands (optional)

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

To begin with a picture, here’s the finished pinhole camera:

Granted, this isn’t a true pinhole camera. It’s more of a pinhole viewer, or a pinhole camera without any film. With a small modification, you could convert this viewer into a film-based pinhole camera. But for the purposes of this science lab, this pinhole viewer is more fun to use for smaller children, and effectively demonstrates how the eye works, without bringing in the complexity of film and development.

Take your shoebox and make the inside of the lid and box black. Paint it, or use a wide, black tape. You’ll see that due to running out of tape halfway through, I used both techniques in my shoebox. The black color prevents light from bouncing around inside the box, which would interfere with our pictures.

Put the lid on the box. Tape the top on, or put a rubber band around it – we want it in place for the rest of the setup and usage.

Use the scissors to twist out a small hole in the center of one end. See the photo above for detail – this is a small half-inch hole. Don’t make it any bigger.

Now to the other end of the shoebox: we need to make a viewfinder. It’s just a piece of wax paper taped in place over a two-inch by two-and-a-half-inch-wide square. Cut out the square, then tape the wax paper over it. Try to get the wax paper to be as smooth as possible. Wrinkles or ripples aren’t a big problem, but the more you have the more they’ll interfere with your images.

And that’s it – we’re finished, and our pinhole camera is ready. As you use the camera with the directions below, keep two things in mind:

1) The camera works best when you aim at a brightly-lit object. For example, things under full sunlight, or other things illuminated by a bright light bulb.

2) In order to be able to see the image displayed on the wax paper, you need to block out any ambient light: drape an opaque blanket over your head and the camera. That should keep things dark enough to see the light projected on the viewfinder. The majority of light hitting your eyeballs should be what’s coming out of the pinhole camera.

To use the pinhole camera, you need to point the small hole at one end at whatever you want to view. Hold the camera so it’s about a foot away from your face – you may have to move the camera towards and away from your face until you see an image appear on the wax paper. 

As you see the images in the pinhole camera, you’ll see something interesting: the images appear upside down and backward!

Here’s a photo of what I saw during my test:

It’s a little small, as it should be – this was my attempt at taking a picture of the wax paper with a digital camera held at viewing distance.

However, see what happens when we zoom in the picture and flip it upside down:

Still doesn’t make much sense? Perhaps not, but here’s a photo of the actual scene the pinhole camera was looking at:

Seeing the original scene, the pinhole camera version should now make sense. It’s blurred from a combination of the camera having no focus, and the wax paper itself messing with the image quality, but it’s still a snowman standing next to a swingset.

What’s happening here?

Light enters the small hole in our pinhole camera. The small hole only allows a little bit of light to enter, and the light that does enter is projected on the wax paper upside down.

A pinhole camera is a great example of how our eye works: the “small hole” in our eye is the iris. Light enters the iris and is projected on to the back of the eye, the retina. The retina is just like the wax paper. Everything you see, including the words you’re reading right now, is projected upside-down on the back of your eye! The brain takes this signal from the retina and flips it “right side up”.

The eye itself is a pretty remarkable organ, but the basics of photography and sight are pretty simple.

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.

When heated, air will expand. When cooled, air will compress. Hot air takes up more space than cold air, as this experiment demonstrates.

Equipment needed:

A balloon

A plastic soda bottle (a 2-liter will work well)

Duct tape

A soup pot

A stove

Water

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Pour some water into the bottle. Three inches or so will be plenty.

Pull the ballon over the mouth of the bottle. The balloon should be deflated at this point. Wrap a strip of duct tape around the balloon-bottle connection, to make sure the seal is close to airtight.

Fill the soup pot with water. An inch or so will be plenty.

Put the bottle in the soup pot. Put the pot on the stove.

Turn on the stove. You should have something that looks like this:

Wait for the water in the pot to heat up. As it does, the water in the bottle will heat, too. The balloon will eventually inflate:

What’s happening? This science experiment demonstrates how air, when heated, will expand. It expands because air molecules move around a lot more when warmed up. Since they’re moving around more, they bounce around and off each other, and take up more room. We see this as the balloon expands.

To see the opposite of this effect, take the bottle-balloon invention off of the stove. Place it in a container full of ice, or stand it up in a freezer. The balloon will shrink back down and deflate, and the bottle itself might compress inward as the air gets colder!

Another question that people may have is, “why doesn’t the plastic bottle melt on the stove?” Here’s an experiment that shows why the bottle won’t melt, because the water conducts the heat away from the bottle.

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.

Experiment with electricity using a multimeter and a battery.

Equipment Needed:

A multimeter, either a digital multimeter or an analog multimeter.

A battery. A standard AA, C, or D battery will do nicely.

A piece of wire. A straightened paperclip is fine, although any wire long enough to go from one end of the battery to the other will be good.

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

There are two characteristics of electricity that get measured regularly: the “voltage“, and the “amperage“, or current.

In some ways, electricity is kind of like pumping water. The “voltage” corresponds to how much “pressure” there is forcing the electricity through things, while the “amperage” corresponds to the actual “quantity” of electricity. So, if water were electricity, a big slow-flowing river would have a very low voltage but a very high amperage, while a stream of water jetting out of a power washer would have a very high voltage but a very low amperage. A battery is kind of like a pump for electricity.

So, we will use your multimeter to measure both voltage and amperage of the electricity from a battery, and see how it changes when we “short the battery out”.

First, turn your multimeter selector dial to “DC Volts“, at the lowest range. Touch one probe to each end of the battery. If it is an unused AA, C, or D battery, it should read 1.5 volts. (If you are using an analog multimeter, and the needle tries to turn the wrong direction, just swap the ends of the battery that the probes are touching).

Leaving the probes on the ends of the battery, short it out: take your bit of wire and bend it so the wire touches both ends of the battery. The voltage that you read should drop quite a lot, maybe to almost zero. This is as if we had a power washer, and punched a hole in the hose so that the water could get out more easily, making the pressure drop. If you leave the wire touching both ends of the battery for more than a few seconds, it will start to get hot, so don’t leave it on too long.

Now, turn your multimeter selector knob to “DC mA“. That stands for Direct Current milli-Amperes. Most multimeters only measure up to 250 mA, and when you touch the probes to the battery ends, it will go off the scale (for an analog multimeter), or display some message about being “out of range” (for a digital multimeter). This means that the battery is able to supply a lot more electrical current than your multimeter can measure.

Still leaving the probes on the battery, short it out again with your piece of wire. Now, instead of being out-of-range, the current will drop to something you can read on your scale. Basically, most of the electricity is flowing through the wire, and your multimeter is measuring the current that is “left over”.

See how the electrical conductivity of water changes depending on what is dissolved in it.

Equipment Needed:

A multimeter, either a digital multimeter or an analog multimeter.

Two or three identical containers for water, like drinking glasses or transparent jars

Distilled water. Grocery stores sell bottled distilled water, usually near their bottled drinking water. “Distilled” means it is high-purity water with nothing dissolved in it

Tap water

Baking soda

Sugar

Table salt

A measuring spoon

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

First, fill one container with distilled water, and set your multimeter to the “ohms” setting for measuring electrical resistance. Touch the multimeter probes together to check that the zero setting is correct. Then, stick the tips of your probes into the water so that the metal part is completely underwater, holding them an inch or so apart. The electrical resistance should be very high.

Next, put some baking soda in the water – about a teaspoon in an 8-ounce glass. Stir it up until the baking soda dissolves, and measure the electrical resistance again. The resistance should be much lower.

Now, fill a series of glasses, with the following

Tap water
Distilled water + 1 teaspoon sugar
Distilled water + 1 teaspoon salt

…and measure the electrical resistance of each. How are they different?

What is going on here?

You should notice that water by itself is not very conductive; that some things (baking soda and salt) make the solution a lot more conductive; while other things (like sugar) do not. What is happening is this: Really pure water is actually an insulator, and does not conduct electricity very well, so it has a high resistance. But, a lot of things that dissolve in water “dissociate”, that is, they break up into electrically charged parts (ions) that can move around. When the ions move, they conduct electricity. Substances that dissolve in water and form ions like this are referred to as “electrolytes”, because they make it possible for water to conduct electricity.

Not all things that dissolve in water are electrolytes, though – the sugar will not make the water very conductive, because sugar dissolves without breaking up into ions. If your sugar did increase the conductivity a bit, it was probably because it had small amounts of some impurities that were electrolytes.

The tap water should have been more conductive than the distilled water, but not as conductive as the water with salt or baking soda dissolved in it. This is because the water out of your tap is not pure, it has minerals like calcium carbonate dissolved in it. Depending on where you live, you could have “hard” water (which has a lot of dissolved minerals in it and is quite conductive), or “soft” water (which has very little dissolved minerals, and can be almost as non-conductive as distilled water).

You can check the conductivities of other liquids, too, like cooking oil, vinegar, or soda pop. Also, see how adding just a little bit of baking soda or salt to water changes the conductivity, compared to adding a large amount.

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.
 

“Your Multimeter and You”: use a multimeter to measure electrical resistance of things, including yourself.

What is a multimeter? Multimeters are instruments to measure several different things, including electrical conductivity, electrical current, and electrical voltage. You can get very cheap ones (see the photo below). You’ll find them at hardware stores for approximately $10 – $20, or you can spend tens, hundreds, or even thousands of dollars for really high-end professional models.  I recommend one of the cheap ones. These can either have a needle and dial reading like the one shown here (analog multimeters) or a numerical display (digital multimeters).

Equipment Needed:

A multimeter, either a digital multimeter or an analog multimeter.

You

A metal object, like a coin

A piece of plastic, wood, or glass

A pencil with the eraser pulled off of one end so that you can see the pencil lead

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

A multimeter has many different settings, the one we are going to use is one of the ones marked “R” (for resistance) or “Ohms”:

This setting is used to measure how easily electricity flows through an object. What the multimeter does is this: it has a battery inside that is connected to the probes.  When you touch the probes to an object, electricity flows from the battery through the object.  If a lot of electricity flows, that means the object has very little electrical resistance, while if hardly any electricity flows, that means the object has very high electrical resistance. The multimeter measures the electrical current flow, and uses this to calculate the resistance of the object in units called “Ohms”.

So, turn the settings selector on your multimeter to measure resistance. First, check the calibration of your multimeter.  With the probes not touching each other, the reading should be “infinite resistance”, meaning no electricity is flowing. When you touch the probes together, the multimeter should read zero resistance, meaning that the current is flowing through the probes as quickly and easily as possible.

Now, we are ready to make some measurements. 

First, check a metal object: the resistance should be very close to zero ohms because metals are very good conductors of electricity.

Next, plastic or wood: the resistance should be extremely high, because these are all very bad conductors of electricity (insulators).

Now try the pencil: touch the multimeter probes to the lead on each end of the pencil.  You should get a reading of somewhere around 10 to 100 ohms. This means that the pencil lead (graphite) will conduct electricity, but that it is not as good of a conductor as most metals.

Finally, try yourself: grab hold of one probe in each hand, and see what your resistance is (don’t worry, the battery in the multimeter is not strong enough to give you a shock).  If your hands are dry, you will probably have nearly infinite resistance.  If your hands are sweaty, or if you lick your fingertips before taking hold of the probe, you should have
a resistance somewhere around 50,000 ohms.  If you touch the probes to your tongue, the resistance should be much lower.

So, this means that while your body has a lot of resistance, it has less resistance than an insulator like a piece of wood.  This is why you can get electrically shocked (because electricity can flow through your body), and why electrical appliances near water are a bad thing (because if you are wet, you have a lot less electrical resistance than if you are
dry).

A hovercraft works because of air pressure: it uses a motor to create a cushion of air. The hovercraft floats on this cushion, allowing it to move over land and water.

Build your own balloon-powered mini-hovercraft. It’s a great way to demonstrate the basics of how a hovercraft works. It also demonstrates the concept of air pressure.

Here’s what we’ll build: our balloon-powered hovercraft, all ready for launch:

Equipment needed:

Balloons

Duct tape

A plastic plate with raised edges. The edges themselves should be smooth if possible, not ridged. (Notice that the plate used in the pictures below has ridged edges. It works, but not as well as one with smooth edges.)

A straw

A sharp knife

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Cut a straw in half. Stick the straw into the balloon. Duct tape around where the straw meets the balloon mouth. Test for air-tightness: you should be able to inflate the balloon by blowing into the straw. After you inflate the balloon, pinch the straw closed. If you hear the hiss of air, there’s still a leak – add more duct tape or pinch around the seal to close all leaks.

Cut a hole in the middle of the plate. It should be no bigger than the straw.

Turn the plate upside-down. Place the straw/balloon part into the hole in the plate. The straw can extend into the other side of the plate, but shouldn’t be lower than the plate’s edges. (When the plate is sitting upside-down, it should rest evenly on its edges. The straw should NOT be pushing the plate into the air.) Here’s a shot of the bottom of the hovercraft:

Use duct tape to make a seal where the straw enters the plate.

Your final product looks like this:

Here’s detail of the bottom of the hovercraft (which is actually the top side of the plate):

Get another straw. This will be our removable inflater for the balloon.

Crimp the end of the inflater straw. It should look similar to this:

Shove the crimped straw into the balloon-attached straw. If you push firmly, you’ll have a pretty good air seal between the two straws. Blow to inflate the balloon. When you’ve inflated it, you can pinch the straw/balloon part to hold the air in until you’re ready to run the hovercraft.

Here’s a shot of me pinching the hovercraft straw to keep air in the balloon. The inflater straw is still inserted:

Place the hovercraft on a very flat surface, like a table or counter-top, and release the pinch.

The balloon will start pushing air under the plate. The air pressure under the plate will build until the plate floats on a cushion of air. When that happens, the plate will skitter back and forth by itself, until the balloon runs out of air. When the balloon is empty, you can “refill” it again with your inflater straw.

Try different things when you launch the hovercraft: Try spinning it. Try putting it on a hill. Put it in water. Try building hovercrafts with different balloons, and enjoy the results!

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.