Materials:

• 1 pint jar with cap
• 1 straw, preferably clear
• Some clay or play dough
• Water
• Rubbing alcohol
• Food Coloring
• 1 marker

Instructions:

1. Fill the jar with equal parts water and rubbing alcohol about ¼ of the way up the jar.
   

   A little too much pouring.

2. Add a few drops of food coloring to color your temperature-sensitive liquid. Using red coloring best mimics a standard mercury thermometer.
   

   Food coloring emphasizes the liquid level.

3. Secure your cap and shake well to mix the liquid and to ensure the food coloring is evenly dispersed.
4. Punch a hole with a pen in the center of the cap, allowing the straw to feed through.
   

   The hole should be sized closely to the straw.

5. Position the straw so that it dips into the liquid but does not touch the bottom of the jar.
6. Use the modeling clay or play dough to wrap around the straw where it enters the cap to create an air tight seal.
7. Use a marker to mark on the jar the water level in the straw at room temperature.

Building the thermometer is only half the fun. Now go and experiment with your child by taking your thermometer and placing it in differently-heated places to watch what happens. Try the refrigerator; take it outside; place it in a shadow, in the sun light, or wherever to see how temperature reacts with your thermometer.

How does it work?
Liquids contract and expand depending on the temperature. Rubbing alcohol is more temperature-sensitive than water, so the liquid changes according to temperature quicker than using only water. When it is hotter, the liquid in the jar expands, pushing fluid up through the straw; the opposite is true for the cold.

This is also a good chance to educate your child on the Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature scales. Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius and boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Fahrenheit, on the other hand, has water freezing at 32 degrees and boiling at 212 degrees.

It just goes to show that, no matter how cold it is outside, there is always fun and learning to be had!

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SnO-J-flakes

Materials:

• Two Styrofoam or plastic cups
• Water
• Orange Juice
• Freezer
• Spoon

Directions:

1. Fill one of the cups with water, the other with orange juice.
2. Put them in the freezer, let them freeze thoroughly over a few hours.
3. Once they’ve frozen, take a look.  The water is frozen ice, and the OJ is frozen, but it has a sticky sort of unfrozen syrup on top.


See the syrup hanging around the cup's rim?

4. Let both sit for 5 minutes.
5. Take the spoon and try scraping off some of the ice and then some of the juice; taste the juice scrapings you can get off.



6. Continue to scrape at the frozen juice and water every so often.  You’ll begin to notice a difference.

Weren’t the juice scrapings good?

As you continued scraping and the cups began to warm, you probably noticed that the juice came apart easier, separating into small, flat crystals.

Tasty.

Why is this?

Dissolving substances like sugar in water lowers water’s freezing point so that it must be colder to freeze. As the juice gets colder, some of the water in it begins to freeze.

The amount of dissolved sugar stays constant, but there is less and less water as it is taken up in the growing ice crystals.  The juice sugar ends up trapped between them.  The sugar acts as separations in the frozen water, and lets the ice crystals come loose easily, when you scrape at them.

With the pure water that you froze, the crystals were unified, making one solid block of ice with no separations created by other substances among the crystals.  When the frozen water cup warmed up, the exposed surface melts, but the rest stays solid. It does not come apart like the OJ did.

You’ve probably noticed a similar syrupy coating on your popsicles.  The same concept applies here!  Hope you enjoyed your ice scrapings!

Like this simple experiment?  Share it with friends.

Make Your Own Butter

All you need is:

• ½ pint of heavy cream
• 1 clean pint jar or other similarly-sized container with a tight cover or lid, preferably plastic
• 1 clean marble

Directions:

1. Take your jar and place the marble inside
2. Pour the cream into the jar and screw the cover on tightly.


Three Materials and You're in Business

3. Have the children shake the jar. A figure-eight motion seems to work best, but let your kids go wild (not so much, if the jar is glass). If you have a plastic container with a tight lid, you can even roll it back and forth.
4. Listen for the marble bouncing up and down.
5. After the marble cannot be heard anymore, you’ll know the cream is thickening.  Keep shaking, and you will soon start to see the glob of butter form.


The Marble Will Go Silent as It Is Enveloped by the Butter

6. Once a good amount of butter is created, drain out the buttermilk. You can throw it away, save it, or drink it!
7. Wash the remaining lump of butter by running cold water into the jar and draining it. This will remove any trapped buttermilk.
8. Find and remove the marble
9. Place the butter into a container of your choice to store or use.

The End Result: a Delicious Scoop of Butter

What is this science magic that has just unfolded before your eyes?

Heavy cream is what is called an “emulsion”.  An emulsion exists when tiny droplets of one type of liquid are floating around in another type of liquid that does not like to mix with the first. In the case of heavy cream, tiny globules of fat are suspended in mostly water. By shaking the heavy cream in the jar, you are forcing the fat globules to slam into one another. If they hit each other with enough force, they will simply stick together, the fat collection becoming bigger and bigger with each extra globule.  After enough shaking, the fat globules form a chunk of butter.

To bring this experiment even further, have your children try different types of cream, such as light cream or whipping cream; each of which has different fat content. They can compare the shaking time needed, the amount of butter created, and the butter’s taste at the end.

This experiment is definitely a workout and will require a good amount of shaking, so, if you have a child that is smaller or has a short attention span, think of using two smaller containers (and a marble in each one) to speed up the process.

Tell Your Friends to Shake It Up

Unearthly Eggs

What You’ll Need:

• Four eggs
• Transparent tape
• Scissors
• Telephone books or other gargantuan books
• Sharpies or markers

Eggs really carry the weight at JumpStart.

How to Get Your Unearthly Eggs Made and Under Pressure:

1. Carefully break off the tips of the more pointed ends of the four eggs and pour out the insides.  You can save the contents to make some delicious scrambled eggs or omelets afterwards!


Pour out the eggs' contents.

2. Take a piece of transparent tape and wind it around the center of each eggshell.
3. Cut through the center of the tape to make four dome-shaped shells. Throw away the other, penetrated end of each shell.


Cut through the tape to create the domes.

4. Lay the four domes on a table in the shape of a square with the cut side down.
5. Using your imaginations, decide what eggs of the future will look like. Will they be blue and spotted? Will they have alien faces on them? Use paint or sharpies to make them as futuristic as you want!


What do futuristic eggs look like in your family?

6. Have your child guess how many humongous books they can lay on top of the shells before they break. Delicately give it a go!

See how much weight your unearthly eggs can withstand!

How can eggs be so strong?

Surprised at how strong eggs are?  They have to be from the future, right?  Well, the real reason they are so strong is because of their arches. Even if arches are made of fragile egg shells, they are still very strong.  They apply horizontal and vertical force to resist the weight and pressure of massive things.  Next time you and your child are driving around, have them spot all the arches they can in your community.  Many bridges and buildings are held up by the strength of arches!

Share with Your Friends How Strong Your Unearthly Eggs Are

Hovercraft

What you will need:

• A Styrofoam plate or bowl
• Pen
• Balloon
• Tape
• Decorations for your Hovercraft

Our mean, green, hovering machine

How to make your very own vehicle of the future:

1. Poke a hole in the center of the Styrofoam plate or bowl with the pen. Make sure the hole is a little bigger than the tip of the pen.
2. Decorate the Styrofoam plate or bowl to look like the Hovercraft of your dreams!
3. Blow up a balloon and clench its opening shut without knotting the end, so the air does not escape. Keep using a hand to close off the balloon.
4. While you continue to clench shut the balloon, have the other person or your other hand tape the very mouth of the balloon flush around the hole in your plate or bowl. Place about four pieces of tape in the shape of a square over the balloon’s opening and the Styrofoam to secure it. Keep holding the bottom of the balloon to keep the air in.
5. To support the weight of the balloon, take four long pieces of tape and attach them from the sides of the balloon to the Styrofoam, while continuing to clench off the balloon’s air. It should look like a hot air balloon tied down to the ground before take-off.
6. Place your Hovercraft on a smooth, flat area, where it will have lots of room to hover around. When you are ready, stop clenching the opening of the balloon and watch your Hovercraft take off!

Want to know how your amazing Hovercraft works?

When the air flows out of the balloon, it goes under the Styrofoam and creates a layer of air space that keeps the Hovercraft and the smooth, flat surface from rubbing against each other. Without the rubbing, there is no friction, which causes an object to slow down when moving or to hold in place. Therefore, the air layer from the balloon creates a buffer, allowing your Hovercraft to glide across the surface, free from the friction that would have held it in place!

That Hovercraft is ready to take off!

Get Hovercrafts in every home on the block!

A magnetic field is the area of influence a magnet has over metals. A magnetic field covers the whole area where the attraction or repulsion of a magnet can be felt.  Magnetic fields are invisible, but the force that pulls on other magnetic materials can be very easily felt in this experiment displaying the concepts of magnetism.

How could that needle be floating so?

The Ghostly Needle

What you will need:

• A Strong Magnet
• Tape
• Thread
• Scissors
• Needle
• Ruler
• A table lamp or other elevated, overhanging surface (such as a shelf)

How to make the needle float:

1. Measure out the distance between the lower surface to the elevated surface with the ruler.
2. Cut out a length of thread equal to the distance between surfaces.
3. With the same thread, thread the needle and tie it off.
4. Tape the magnet to the underside of the elevated surface.
5. Place the needle (be careful!) within the magnetic field of the magnet with one hand; you should feel a tension on the thread as you do, as you pull the other end of the thread with your other hand.
6. Slowly, slightly reel in the thread to maximize the gap between the needle-point and the magnet itself, while keeping it within the magnetic field; shoot for a one-inch gap.
7. When you have created the best effect, tape down or otherwise anchor the thread.

This ghoul makes quite an impression.

What happened?

Did you feel the tugging of the magnet on the little needle when it was nearby?  That pull was caused by the magnet’s attraction to the oppositely-charged particles of the metal needle.  Just as with the awesome static experiments posted on this blog at the beginning of the week before last, opposites attract in the world of electrical charges, and the same concept is shown here in relation to magnetism.  The magnet has a magnetic field, and that field forms a sort of invisible tractor beam that draws in metal objects placed within its reach.  The magnet you had in your home probably had a field that extended a couple of inches beyond the magnet itself.

Additionally, …

Try placing thin items, like a sheet of construction paper, in between the magnet and the levitating needle.  Assuming you don’t bump the needle out of place, the needle should remain in the air!  How can the needle manage to thwart the blocking efforts of the thin object?  The magnetic field effect penetrates through the other object, allowing it to continue reaching out to the needle on the thread.

Notepads can't hold back a magnetic field.

Also, try having the needle follow the magnet held in your hand, while still having the needle anchored down by the thread.  With slow, steady movement, the needle should follow the magnet as you move the magnet around in the air.  Just keep the needle within the reach of the magnet’s field.  You should be able to make the needle achieve some very impressive angles!

Acute angles, obtuse angles - magnets handle them all.

Show off your magnetic personality by drawing others to this post!

Levitating Ice Cubes

What you will need:

• Clear cup
• Ice cube
• Salt
• Food coloring (optional)
• String

1. Fill the cup ¾’s full of water.
2. Put a drop or so of food coloring into the salt to create magical, colored salt crystals. (We used green; with the addition of food coloring, the attachment of ice to the string will become more apparent.)
   

   Pine green never looked so Halloween-appropriate!

3. Now, place the ice cube into the water.
4. Pace the string inside the water and over the ice cube. Put on display the fact that the string does not stick to the ice cube.
5. Once that idea is obvious to your child, sprinkle the colored salt onto the ice cube.
6. Quickly place the string onto the ice cube and let it sit for about 2 minutes.
7. Pull the string out of the water and show your child that the ice cube is now securely attached to the string, like magic!

Static spooks, boo-tiful bats, and now levitating ice! What's next from JumpStart?

What happened?
Salt lowers the freezing point of the water.  Therefore, when the salt hits the ice cube, the ice cube begins to melt a little bit. After this reaction has occurred, the salt begins to weaken and becomes captured by the ice, freezing the thread to the ice cube.

Where do we see this reaction in our everyday lives?
Ever wonder why oceans never freeze? Since the salt compound found so heavily in the ocean controls the ocean’s freezing point, salt lowers water’s ability to solidify. Even when the temperature is zero degrees, oceans are still filled with salty water!

Also, have you ever wondered why people salt icy roads? This experiment must have made that a little clearer! We’ve shown that salt has the ability to melt ice. This is especially helpful in cold, snowy places where people walk or drive everyday, to keep paths and roads slip-free!

Like mastering ice?  Spread the knowledge to your friends!

Floating Spooks
What you will need:

• Balloon
• Wool sweater, or hair
• Scissors
• Coffee filter

Find out how to cut these little buggers out...

1. Cut up little pieces of a coffee filter into the shape of 2” tall ghosts.
2. Blow up the balloon and rub it on a wool sweater or your hair.
3. Now, quickly take the balloon off your sweater or head and place it over the little ghosts.
4. Watch the ghosts actively float upwards towards the balloon!

Evanescent lighting not included!

Like magic, static electricity possesses the power to move objects without strings or direct contact.  The rubbing of the wool gives the balloon a negative charge – this is the same negative charge you gather when dragging your feet in socks over carpet and the same charge you feel jump from your body when you touch a metal object!  In the world of electrical charges, opposites attract and similar charges repel.  The balloon easily attracts opposite, positively-charged particles of the light ghosts, which is why they jump up without actually being touched!  Amazing, right?

Up, up, and away!

Here’re two more easy-to-do, spooky static experiments:

The Lost Water
What you will need:

• Balloon
• Wool sweater, or hair
• Running faucet

1. Blow up the balloon and rub it on a wool sweater or your hair.
2. Turn the faucet on to run a slow, steady stream of water.
3. Now, take the balloon off your sweater or head and place it close to the running water.
4. Watch the water magically bend towards the balloon!

Water has no overall electrical charge, but the negatively-charged particles in the water can move a little bit.  When the negatively-charged balloon comes near the water, the water molecules’ negative particles repel away from the balloon with the same charge, rotating the water molecules overall.  Now, the sides of the water molecules facing the balloon have a positive charge.  Just like puzzle pieces, the negative and positive charges are attracted to each other and fit together perfectly.  To better understand this, think of two magnets you try to force together.  If the sides of both magnets facing each other are giving off negative charges, they will not touch and repel each other away. However, if one face of a magnet is negative and the other magnet’s face is positive, they attract each other. This is similar to the actions of the water and the balloon. The attraction between the water’s face’s positive charge and balloon’s negative charge causes the stream to bend towards the balloon like a magnet, defying the directly-downward pull of gravity!

Collecting Pitch-Black Pepper
What you will need:

• Balloon
• Wool sweater, or hair
• Salt
• Pepper

1. Mix up salt and pepper in a little pile.
2. Blow up the balloon and rub it on a wool sweater or your hair.
3. Now, take the balloon off your sweater or head and slowly place it closely over the pile of salt and pepper. Don’t move too fast, or the salt will leap as well!
4. Watch the dark pepper jump up to cling to the balloon, leaving the salt in the dust!

Again, the rubbing against the balloon charges the balloon negatively.  Negative charges are drawn to opposite, positive charges, and the salt and pepper both fall into the positive charge category.  The pepper flies up without the salt, because the pepper is lighter than the salt; if you moved the balloon any faster towards the pile, they both would have leapt to attach to the balloon.  You’re now free to wash off the pepper, or wipe off the pepper from the balloon and try to recollect it into its separate shaker.

Get your friends ecStatic about these experiments!

You will need:

• A clear, full-sized glass
• Water
• Oil
• Salt

How to make your potion:

1. Fill the glass half-full of water.
2. Add about a half-inch of oil to the glass, on top of the water. The oil will float on top of the water because it is less dense than the water, which makes it float.
3. Pour in some salt.
4. Have your child observe and comment on what happens!

Well, what did happen?

When you pour the salt into the oil and water mixture, you should see that the salt brings down bubbles of oil with it, into the water. When the salt and oil combine, they are denser than the water; thus, they sink. When the salt dissolves in the water, the oil is free to float back to the top of the mixture. Kind of looks like a lava lamp, right?

If you’re still feeling creative, try making a new oil-water mixture and putting sugar in it, instead of salt. What happens? Also try putting in some food coloring (An oozy green?  A vicious red?  A repulsive yellow?) in either solution to make your potion really look like a crazy concoction!

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Fall Wreath

What you will need:

• A few pieces of colored paper (green, yellow, orange, red, brown)
• A black marker
• Scissors
• A paper plate (any size but not too small)
• A glue stick

1. First, cut the center of your paper plate out. Don’t worry no need to be perfect!

 



2. On your colored sheets of paper, draw different shaped leaves. To get an idea of what kinds of leaves to draw, take your child on a nature walk and try to find as many leaves as you can. When you get back, try to recreate the shapes of the leaves on your colored paper.

 

3. Cut the leaves out.

 

4. With your black marker, draw the veins of the leaf on your paper cutouts. Here is what your cutouts should somewhat look like:

 



Feel free to get creative!

 

5. Now that you have your leaf cut outs, use your glue stick to put a little bit of glue on the backs of them, one at a time. Stick each leaf onto the paper plate like below:

 



 

6. Continue sticking the leaves all around the edge of the plate until it is completely covered. You have now made yourself a beautiful fall leaf wreath to hang in your house and enjoy!

We also think it makes a cool goofy hat.....haha

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