Nita Jain, PhD, is a researcher at the Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and an advocate for science outreach to children. Here, she shares fun science experiments inspired by some of her favorite children’s books.
What Do You Do with an Idea? by Kobi Yamada
Activity:
Floating eggs
What You’ll Need:
- 2 transparent glasses (deep enough for an egg to sink completely)
- 2 fresh eggs
- Hot and cold tap water
- Salt
- Measuring spoon
- Stirring spoon
Experiment:
- Fill one glass with hot water (ask an adult to help you with this) and one with cold water
- Add 4-5 tablespoons of salt to the hot water and stir until it dissolves completely. Keep adding 1 tablespoon of salt until no more dissolves (you will see salt swirling at the bottom—this is called a saturated solution)
- Put a fresh egg in each glass. Observe.
- The egg will sink in the glass with cold water but will float in the glass with salt water!
How Does it Work?
Salt dissolved in water increases the density if water. Denser liquids are better at keeping objects afloat.
Further Ideas:
- When you toss a penny into the ocean when you go to the beach, it sinks! But how does a ship, which is SO much bigger and heavier than a penny, float?
- Try floating different objects on the salt and fresh water.
What Do You Do with a Problem? by Kobi Yamada
Activity:
Coffee filter parachutes
What You’ll Need:
- Coffee filters (the round/bucket kind)
- Yarn
- Pipe cleaners
Experiment:
- Cut the yarn into 8 inch lengths
- Punch 4 holes at equal distances in the coffee filter
- Tie one end of the string into each hole; tie the other 4 ends of the yarn together with a piece of string or with a short pipe cleaner
- Make a stick figure with the pipe cleaner by twisting it
- Attach the pipe cleaner person to the parachute (note: you can attach any other weight too such as Lego figures a small stone etc.)
- Test your parachute
How Does it Work?
As the parachute floats down, the air under it pushes it up, thus slowing the fall of the parachute.
Additional Ideas:
- Test other materials to make your parachute; a square section of a grocery bag, paper or cloth: which one is better at holding your “weight” up in the air longer?
- Try different lengths of the yarn and see which works better- shorter or longer?
Ada Twist, Scientist by Andrea Beatty
Activity:
Make slime
What You Need:
- School glue—white or clear (Clear looks better!)
- Liquid laundry starch or borax solution (2 tablespoons borax in a cup of water)
- Water
- Paper cup for mixing
- Food coloring/glitter/glow-in-the dark paint etc. for added effects
Experiment:
- Mix 1 cup water + 1 cup school glue thoroughly
- Add food color/glitter etc. as required. Stir
- Add 1 cup liquid starch (or borax solution) and stir
- Slime will begin to form almost immediately
How Does it Work?
White glue is a polymer—made up of large chains of identical molecules (other examples of polymers are rubber, plastic, nylon etc.). These chains slide past one another easily and allow the glue to be “poured” from the bottle.
When borax or starch is added, their molecules link the glue molecules to each other, making even bigger molecules that make it difficult for them to slide past one another. This results in a tangled mass—slime!
Iggy Peck, Architect by Andrea Beatty
Activity:
Build a bridge
What You Need:
- Drinking straws
- Masking tape
- Popsicle sticks (Craft sticks)
- Scraps of paper
- Pipe cleaners
- Glue
Experiment:
- Talk with an adult about different kinds of bridges (arch, beam, suspension, truss)
- Think about how you might make a bridge with the materials you have.
- Draw out a design in a notebook
- Construct your bridge
- Test your prototype with a can or toy car
- If your first prototype does not work, try again after making changes to the design
The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires
Activity:
Tinker crate: build your own “most magnificent thing.”
What You’ll Need:
- Pipe cleaners
- Straws
- Card paper
- Hole punch
- Nuts and bolts
- Twine/yarn/rubber bands
- Marshmallows
- Toothpicks
- Empty kitchen towel or paper towel roll
- Anything else you can find around your home
Experiment:
- Think about what you want to make
- Then draw a design in a notebook/piece of paper
- Build it
- Did your contraption work? What would you do differently the next time?
Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beatty
Activity:
Build a ‘Rosie-copter’. Download the template from this link. Follow the instructions. After you build your copter, try making changes to the design to help it stay up in the air longer.
After you build your copter, try making changes to the design to help it stay up in the air longer.
About the Mass General Research Institute
Research at Massachusetts General Hospital is interwoven through more than 30 different departments, centers and institutes. Our research includes fundamental, lab-based science; clinical trials to test new drugs, devices and diagnostic tools; and community and population-based research to improve health outcomes across populations and eliminate disparities in care.
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