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:

Plastic drinking straws

Scissors

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

What we’re trying to do is to create a simple musical instrument out of a plastic straw. It’s pretty easy. First, cut the top of a straw into what looks like a triangle. (It may help if you squish the straw end first before cutting it – this ensures the cut is the same for the top and bottom of the straw.) When you’re done, one end of your straw should look like this:

Next, blow into the straw. You’ll need to blow pretty hard, and your lips will seal firmly around the straw right at the point where you first made the cut. You may have to move the straw back and forth a bit until you find the right place. The parts of the straw should be flat, and parallel with your tongue – don’t rotate the straw, or the noisemaking will get very difficult or impossible. When you’ve got the right technique, you’ll be rewarded with a buzzing noise coming from the end of the straw.

This is it – we’re making sound! This is the same noise-making concept as reeded musical instruments, like the clarinet and oboe: blowing air over a reed (in this case, our cut straw end) makes that reed vibrate. When it vibrates at the right speed, it makes a noise. A similar technique also allows you to talk. Your vocal cords are just like this straw: you blow air over your vocal cords, and your vocal cords vibrate, and this makes noise come out of your mouth. The difference is that in speaking, your mouth, tongue and many other factors work together. They change various parts of how the air flows and how fast your vocal cords vibrate. This control allows us to form words, sing, and make many other interesting noises.

You can use this concept with our “straw clarinet”, too: cut the straw at the other end (the end you don’t blow into). Shorten it. Make more “straw clarinets”, and cut them to several different lengths. When you blow into these, you’ll find the noise is different from each one. Finally, if you’re really talented, try blowing while changing the tightness of your lips, or varying the amount of air you’re blowing – you’ll find that the noise will change as well.

See surface tension in action – what happens when you turn it on, and what happens when you turn it off!

Equipment needed:

A wide bowl filled with water

Several index cards

Scissors

Liquid dishwashing soap

An eye dropper, or medicine dropper

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Cut an index card into confetti: cut it into strips, then cut those strips into squares. The squares should be no larger than a half-inch on a side.

Mix up the confetti. Make sure none of the pieces are sticking to each other.

Suck a couple drops of liquid soap into the eye dropper.

Sprinkle the confetti in the bowl of water:

Then, use the eye dropper to squeeze one drop of liquid soap directly into the middle of the bowl. Once the soap hits the water, the pieces of paper will fly towards the side of the bowl:

What’s happening? When we drop the soap into the water, it breaks the water’s surface tension right where the soap landed. Think of the surface of the water as a balloon, stretched tight. When the surface tension breaks, the balloon “pops”, and pulls itself away from the break, taking the confetti with it.

If you want to do this experiment again, you’ll need to make sure that any soap is completely washed off any bowl you use. So either use a different bowl, or be sure to wash all the soap off the original one.

A “zoomer” is a small boat-shaped piece of paper that zooms around the surface of water using surface tension.

Equipment needed:

A wide body of water. At the smallest, you should use something like a bathtub. Bigger examples would be a puddle or a swimming pool. The water must be calm, however. If there are waves or splashes, the experiment won’t work.

Several index cards

Scissors

Liquid dishwashing soap

An eye dropper, or medicine dropper

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Cut out an index card in a shape like this:

Notice the hole cut near the bottom – be sure to cut out that part, too. This hole is where we’ll drop the liquid soap.

Fill your eye dropper with some of your liquid soap.

Next, carefully drop the zoomer into your water.

Finally, quickly squeeze a couple drops of liquid soap into the hole in the bottom of the zoomer. And the zoomer will zoom! It will move quickly around, and will also stop fairly quickly, depending on the size of your water container.

What’s happening? The zoomer is taking advantage of surface tension – the “skin” that forms on top of the water, allowing small things (like bugs, leaves, and your zoomer) to float on top.

Dishwashing liquid – and every other soap – will break water’s surface tension. The breaking of the surface tension pushes the zoomer forward. The zoomer will continue to move until it runs into water where the surface tension is already broken, or until it runs out of soap!

How does a color TV show colors? How does a computer monitor show colors? Use a hand magnifier to see how a computer or color TV displays such a wide range of colors.

Equipment needed:

A good hand magnifier. A standard low-power magnifying glass will work, although, like other optics, you get what you pay for. A nice Hastings Triplet Magnifier will cost more, but between the 10X magnification and the clear, distortion-free image I think it’s worth it if you plan to use it much.

A color display. Like the one you are probably using right now to read this. Although, if you only have a low-power magnifier, it will be easier to see how it works if you use a color television instead of a computer display.

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Look at the test pattern picture below with your magnifier. (Click on the photo to view the full-size version.)

You can also turn on your TV to something that shows different colors and look at that.

What you will see is that, close up, the screen really only shows three colors: tiny rectangles of red, green, and blue. The rectangles are so small that, from a distance, they all blur together and your eye mixes the colors.

To make different colors, the display makes the rectangles brighter and dimmer. If you look at the test pattern picture, you can see that each color is different brightnesses of the colored rectangles.

Your veins and arteries carry blood and nutrients around your body. Demonstrate “you are what you eat” with a little help from celery.

Equipment Needed:

Glasses

Celery

Water

Liquid food coloring

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Pick a couple of colors of food coloring (hint: green may not work as well, as it’s too close to the color of the celery). Put three drops of the food coloring into your glasses, and fill the glasses halfway with water.

Cut your celery so that, when placed in the glass, you have half of the celery in water, and the other half out of water:

Let the celery sit in the glasses overnight.

The next day, look at your celery. In the picture below, you’ll see two celery sticks cut in half. One stick was soaking in blue water, the other in red. The parts labeled “bottom” were the parts submerged in water overnight. The parts labeled “top” were sticking out above the water overnight.

Notice the food coloring leaking out of the “top” pieces.

What’s happening here? When placed in the water, the celery uses it like it always does – it draws the water up into its “vascular bundle“, the thin lines that are the transport system of a celery stalk. Similar to the way blood flows in our own veins and arteries (as pumped around by our heart), the celery’s vascular bundle uses a process called “transpiration” to move its liquid nutrients.

Our bodies need nutrients and liquids to live, just like a stick of celery. Now, we don’t just sit down in a glass of water; we drink it! But the concept is similar – what we take into our bodies spreads to most every other part of our body. We are what we eat (and drink).

If you’ve ever wanted to make your own rainbow, it’s not difficult with a little experimentation.

Equipment Needed:

A flashlight

A large, wide glass (it should be as wide or wider than the head of your flashlight)

Water

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

In this experiment, we refract light from our flashlight through water. The light, when refracted in the right way, will separate the light into its component colors. The name “Roy G. Biv” is an easy to remember name. It’s also an acronym: ROYGBIV are the first letters of all the colors in a rainbow. The colors in a rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

A rainbow is also an example of additive color mixing. Additive color mixing occurs when you mix together different colors of light. The light coming from the flashlight is our combination of all colors – it appears white. After shining it through our water, the water separates the white light into the colors that make it up.

To make a rainbow, I used a coffee pot filled with water. Then I placed it on the floor, and shone a flashlight through it, with the refracted light landing on a nearby wall:

Next, you’ll have to play with the flashlight and the water. Move them around. Angle them differently. Move them closer to or away from the wall. The light pattern on the wall will change, and eventually, if you work it right, you’ll see a rainbow at the edges of the light pattern. While the setup you see pictured above worked pretty well, the rainbow picture below was taken by shining the flashlight from underneath the coffee pot, shining the light pattern on the ceiling:

Here’s a close-up of the rainbow picture. Look close, and say hello to Mr. Roy G. Biv!

Possibly the simplest and cheapest kite in the world.

Equipment Needed:

A standard notebook-size piece of paper. (Scrap paper from a printer is fine.)

A spool of sewing thread

Scissors and tape

Something to poke holes in paper (a pencil or pen tip is fine)

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Take the sheet of paper, fold it diagonally as shown in the picture below, and cut off the tag end of the paper to make a square. Save the tag end for later, you will need it to make a tail for the kite.

Fold the square part as shown below, then flip over and fold the other side the same way.

Once both sides are folded, open it out and poke holes on both sides at the points shown.

Then trim off the tips with the scissors.

Take the tag end that you cut off the paper to make it a square, and cut this into four strips as shown. Tape these end-to-end to make a tail.

Tape the tail to the kite.

Then tie a piece of thread through the hole that you punched in the paper, with the thread about as long as is shown below, to make a “bridle”. Tie a loop in the middle of the thread.

Now take the rest of your thread and tie it to the loop in the bridle, and your kite is ready to fly. Take it outside and give it a shot. It doesn’t take much wind to fly these kites, so you can fly them even on fairly calm days.

How do kites work?

When the wind hits them they divert the air, forcing it forward and down. At the same time, the wind makes a force on the kite, forcing it backwards and up. This is the basic principle that makes “lift” in airplanes. The string keeps the kite from simply being blown backwards, so it has to go upwards.

Since these kites are so cheap and easy to make, you can try lots of experiments:

- What happens if you make the tail longer or shorter?

- What happens if you make the “bridle” string longer or shorter?

- What happens if you cut holes in the kite?

- Can you string a bunch of kites in a chain? How far apart do they have to be in order to work properly?

- Can you think of ways to change the shape of the kite to make it fly differently?

Learn about friction – use a pencil to pick up thousands of grains of rice. (And no, this won’t take hundreds of years.)

Equipment needed:

A non-breakable bottle (a 20-ounce pop bottle works fine)

A pencil (it should be at or near full-size)

Rice (you’ll need almost a pound for a 20-ounce pop bottle)

A funnel

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Use the funnel to pour the rice into the pop bottle. Leave a few inches of space at the top.

Insert the pencil into the bottle’s hole, and start stabbing!

After a few stabs, the rice will settle, and you’ll feel the pencil getting stuck in the rice as you try to pull it out.

It will take some practice and experimentation as to what type of stabs work best. (Quick stabs work well.) What you’re trying to do is to get the pencil “stuck” in the rice. If you get it stuck just right, you can carefully lift the pencil, as well as the entire bottle of rice!

This experiment teaches about friction. Friction is the resistance you feel when one object is moved against another. When you’re walking outside on a snowy day, you might step on ice and slip. The ice is slippery because there is a low amount of friction between your feet and the ice. But if you sprinkle sand on the ice, you can walk without slipping – the sand increases the friction to make walking safer.

When you stab the pencil into the rice and it “sticks”, the rice is packed against other grains of rice, with are all contained by the bottle. The friction between the rice and the pencil is strong enough to hold the pencil in place when you lift the bottle with it.

See what colors combine to form other colors. Make a CD spinner to improve the testing, giving you a color combiner that can be reused with any color you want.

Equipment needed:

One CD that’s no longer needed (like a music CD, a “Free AOL CD”, or a blank computer CD)

Washable markers

A penny

A pliers

A gas flame (like from a gas stove, gas fireplace, or propane grill)

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Hold the penny with the pliers. Heat the penny for thirty seconds over a gas flame. (A candle won’t work – it’s not hot enough.)

Hold the CD carefully, and use the pliers to gently push the penny into the CD’s center hole:

The penny will be hot and the CD will melt. Try to place the penny so it bisects the CD. Hold it there until the penny cools enough for the CD plastic to harden and hold it in place. (Blow on the penny, and this will take only another ten or twenty seconds.)

Now you’ve got something special: It’s a washable, CD spinner.

Get the washable markers and color the CD with a couple of colors. We’ll use red and blue in our example. Make sure to color so the whole of the CD is covered, and make sure your colors alternate frequently:

Now spin it!

You’ll see the red and blue will combine and form purple:

When you want to try different colors, it’s easy – the CD and washable markers come off just by rinsing:

Use this experiment to learn about colors and color combinations. And have fun spinning.

Static electricity is the transfer of electrons from one material to another. You can see the effects of static electricity using balloons.

Equipment needed:

Two balloons inflated to the same size.

A light stick approximately two feet long (a couple of long matchsticks or chopsticks will do the trick)

Duct tape, masking tape, or some other heavier-duty tape.

String

A piece of cloth (wool works best). Something sock-sized or washcloth-sized will be fine.

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

If needed, create your “stick”. In the pictures below, I used a couple of long matchsticks, and just duct-taped them together. The goal is to create a stick long enough to suspend two balloons, and prevent them from easily touching a wall.

Cut two equal lengths of string, approximately 2 feet long. Tie each balloon to the stick using its own piece of string. Make sure the baloons are both at the same level.

Tape the stick on to a wall. Inside of a room entrance worked for me. This allows the balloons to extend into a room, while being held away from the walls.

The balloons may stick to each other slightly, or be repelled slightly, as we see here:

Now, rub one of the balloons with the wool, and let it drop. What happens? It may “bounce” away from the other balloon. It may stick to it.

Rub the second balloon with the wool, and let it drop. Both balloons should bounce away from each other. If you’ve built up enough of a charge, one balloon may even bounce off of the other balloon and stick to the wall:

What’s happening here?

Static electricity is the imbalance of electron charges. When you rub a balloon with the cloth, you’re actually moving electrons from the cloth to the baloon. The addition of the electrons gives the balloon a negative charge.

A couple simple rules when dealing with static electricity:

Objects will repel each other if they have the same charge. A balloon with a negative charge will repel other balloons with a negative charge. This is why the balloons pushed away from each other when we rubbed them both with the cloth.

Objects will attract each other if they have different charges.A balloon with a positive charge will attract other things with a negative charge. This is why rubbing a balloon attracts it to the wall – the wall has a more positive charge, which attracts the balloons more negative charge.

We use balloons in this experiment because they’re very light: the static attraction/repulsion is easier to see. But you can charge other things, too. See what other things you can make stick to the balloon (hint: you’ll have good luck with thin, light things, like paper, or hair).

Earth’s atmosphere insulates and heats the Earth. This experiment is a great visual of the Greenhouse Effect.

Equipment needed:

Two identical glasses, filled with cold water.

A sealable bag (like a Zip-Lock bag, or a bag you can twist-tie closed). It must be large enough to completely cover and seal over one of the glasses.

A thermometer

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Place both glasses in direct sunlight, or very close to a very bright light.

Wait for two hours.

Open the bag, and take the temperature of the water in both glasses.

Note the difference between the measurements. Which one is warmer?

Why did this happen? As the sunlight (or bright light bulb) heated the water, the warmer air around the water was trapped inside the glass covered by the bag.

This is an example of how the Greenhouse Effect and the Earth’s atmosphere work – they are good things, to an extent, because they keep heat on our planet and prevent it from getting too cold, and that keeps us alive! But it’s a tricky balance, because by changing Earth’s atmosphere (or by using a thicker bag to cover our glass), we might increase the overall temperature of our planet.

This experiment shows how water can conduct and absorb heat.

Equipment needed:

Water

Balloons

A lit candle

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Blow up a balloon. Hold it over the lit candle. Boom! The balloon explodes! The lit candle heated the balloon, weakened and melted it, and the balloon exploded.

Now take another balloon, and fill it halfway with water.

Hold that same balloon over the candle. Do you think the balloon will explode, splashing water everywhere?

Nope.

You can have the candle flame actually touch the balloon, and the balloon won’t break!

The water in the balloon is absorbing the heat from the candle. The balloon conducts heat very well, so the candle flame transfers to the water without harming the balloon.

This is an experiment that shows the concept of heat being energy.

Equipment needed:

Hot water

Cold water

Two identical glasses

Liquid food coloring

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

As water gets warmer, water molecules move around faster and faster. We can’t see a molecule without help, of course, but we can still see the effects of hot and cold water molecules.

Fill your glasses. One should have hot water in it, the other cold water. Pick a color of food coloring.

Put three drops of food coloring in each glass.

Wait, and watch what happens.

You can tell from the food coloring which glass is holding the hot water, and which is holding the cold. The cold water contains less energy – the water molecules are moving slower, and therefore the coloring mixes slower.

The hot water’s molecules are moving faster – the water contains more heat, and therefore more energy. So the food coloring mixes faster.

Learn about buoyancy. Be able to answer the question: “How does a boat float?”

Equipment needed:

Play-Doh or some sort of modeling clay.

The Digital Bits Science Lab Experiment:

Roll your Play-Doh or modeling clay into a ball:

Drop it into water. You’ll see it sink:

Next, take another handful of Play-Doh – use the same amount as before. Make a deep boat-like or cup shape, something similar to what you see here:

And put it in the water:

Why does our boat float? This experiment demonstrates the concept of buoyancy. Also called the “Archimedes principle“, this is what happens when a boat is placed in water: The water pushes back! The Archimedes principle tells us that an object in liquid is pushed upward by a weight equal to the amount of water the object displaced.

To put it simply: When you put your boat in water, how much water does the boat “push” out of the way? Take that water, and weigh it. That weight is the same weight pushing the boat “up” out of the water.

So in this case, the weight of our displaced water (the amount pushed out of the way) was more than the weight of the Play-Doh boat. That’s why our boat floats!

Note that the experiment above was done with Play-Doh. And a word of warning – this experiment is messy! Play-Doh (and I would assume other modeling clays) is water-soluable, unless you mold and harden the clay before dunking it. So the longer you leave the Play-Doh in the water, the more it will turn into a gooey, sticky mess. Parents and teachers, you’ve been warned. Kids, you’ll love it!

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.