If you love airplanes, try out some of these paper creations in Building Vehicles That Fly. These paper engineering projects will help you learn the science behind how planes are designed and built. If you understand how the forces of aerodynamics work, you can make a paper airplane that flies really far! In several of the books listed below the directions are really clear with color photographs to help you make the folds correctly. Start out with a couple easy ones and then try something more challenging.

What You Need

• Paper
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Paper Clips

Do an experiment with three paper airplanes folding the exact same way with the exact same size of paper. Fly all three planes and measure how far they go. What happens if you add one paperclip to each? What happens of you add 2? Or 3? Record your results.

Websites, Printables & Activities

• NASA: How to Make a Dart Airplane
• NASA: How to Build a Paper Jet Model
• NASA: How to Make a Blunt Nose Airplane
• NASA: Four Forces on an Airplane
• NASA: What Is Aerodynamics?
• Printable: PBS Kids Fetch Hang Time
• Exploratorium Try This! Paper Airplanes
• The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis: Airplane Models & Toys

You can also ask a math and science expert for homework help by calling the Ask Rose Homework Hotline. They provide FREE math and science homework help to Indiana students in grades 6-12.

e-Books & Audiobooks

Use your indyPL Library Card to check out books about paper airplanes at any of our locations, or check out paper airplane e-books and audiobooks from OverDrive Kids right to your device! If you have never used OverDrive before, you can learn how to use e-books and learn how to use audiobooks.

Need more help? Ask a Library staff member at any of our locations or call, text or email Ask-a-Librarian. Additionally, the Tinker Station helpline at (317) 275-4500 is also available. It is staffed by device experts who can answer questions about how to read, watch and listen on a PC, tablet or phone.

Paper Airplanes – Draw or Fold These Aerodynamic Marvels

If you love airplanes, try out some of these paper creations and engineering projects to learn the science behind how planes are designed and built.

View more…

Sometimes when atoms come together to form a molecule, one end of the molecule has a positive charge and one end of the molecule has a negative charge. When this happens the molecule is called a polar molecule. Molecules that do not have two different electrical poles are called non-polar molecules. For today’s demonstration you will make a lava bottle to observe polar and non-polar molecules.

This experiment will show you how polar molecules and non-polar molecules behave when added together. If two kinds of molecules are added together that are both polar molecules, they will mix. They are miscible. Miscible means that the two things can mix together. If two non-polar molecules are added together they will also mix and are miscible. However, if a non-polar molecule and a polar molecule are added together, they will NOT mix together. This is called imiscible. Imiscible means that the two kinds of molecules CANNOT mix together.

What You Need

• Plastic Bottle
• Water
• Vegetable Oil
• Food coloring
• Measuring Cups
• Alka Seltzer

Instructions to Make a Lava Bottle

Fill the bottle about 3/4 of the way up with vegetable oil. Fill the bottle the rest of the way up with water. Now add some drops of food coloring. Close the cap on the bottle and shake it up. What happens?

Break the alka seltzer tablet in half. Open the bottle and drop in one half. What happens? Once the bubbles settle down drop in the other half. What happens again?

Water is a polar molecule. Vegetable oil is a non-polar molecule. These two substances do not mix together, they are imiscible (they will not mix together). That’s why you see the blobs of water bobbing around in the oil. Food coloring is a polar molecule so it WILL mix with the water. The water and the food coloring are both polar molecules and will mix together. That’s why the water blobs turn the color of the food coloring and the oil does not.

The alka seltzer just makes the lava bottle more fun because it makes the colorful water blobs move without shaking the bottle. The alka seltzer tablets dissolve in the the water and make carbon dioxide gas (like we saw vinegar and baking soda do in the Exploding Ziploc Experiment. The carbon dioxide gas bubbles attach to the colorful water blobs and make them float to the top of the bottle. When the gas bubbles pop there is no gas bubble to hold up the water blob, so it slowly floats back down to the bottom of the bottle.

Websites, Activities & Printables

• National Geographic for Kids: Groovy Lava Lamp
• Steve Spangler Science: Make Your Own Lava Lamp
• Science Bob: Blobs in a Bottle
• Exploratorium: Glitter Globe
• Glasgow Sciece Center: Lava Lamp
• Science Fun for Everyone: Lava Lamp

You can also ask a math and science expert for homework help by calling the Ask Rose Homework Hotline. They provide FREE math and science homework help to Indiana students in grades 6-12.

e-Books and Audiobooks

Use your indyPL Library Card to check out books about Science Experiments at any of our locations, or check out science experiment e-books and audiobooks from OverDrive Kids right to your device! If you have never used OverDrive before, you can learn how to use e-books and learn how to use audiobooks.

Need more help? Ask a Library staff member at any of our locations or call, text or email Ask-a-Librarian. Additionally, the Tinker Station helpline at (317) 275-4500 is also available. It is staffed by device experts who can answer questions about how to read, watch and listen on a PC, tablet or phone.

Atoms, Molecules and the Elements in the Periodic Table for Kids

The photographs, diagrams and creative storytelling in these books make the building blocks of the universe understandable…and fun! Find out about the scientists and discoveries which helped us find out what makes up all the stuff of the universe.

View more…

Sir Isaac Newton, an English scientist born in 1642, discovered three important principles of physics that describe how things move. Consequently, the principles bear his name, Newton’s First, Second, and Third Laws of Motion. Today’s experiment demonstrates Newton’s Third Law of Motion. It says that for every action there is an equal and opposite re-action. Basically, if an object is pushed, that object will push back in the opposite direction, equally hard.

Websites, Activities & Printables

• Groovy Lab in a Box: 4 Groovy Ways to Teach Newton’s Third Law
• Lego Challenge: Newton’s Third Law
• NASA: Newton’s Third Law of Motion
• IndyPL Blog: Newton’s First Law of Motion
• IndyPL Blog: Newton’s Second Law of Motion

You can ask a math and science expert for homework help by calling the Ask Rose Homework Hotline. They provide FREE math and science homework help to Indiana students in grades 6-12.

e-Books and Audiobooks

Use your indyPL Library Card to check out books about Sir Isaac Newton at any of our locations, or check out Sir Isaac Newton e-books and audiobooks from OverDrive Kids right to your device! If you have never used OverDrive before, you can learn how to use e-books and learn how to use audiobooks.

Need more help? Ask a Library staff member at any of our locations or call, text or email Ask-a-Librarian. Additionally, the Tinker Station helpline at (317) 275-4500 is also available. It is staffed by device experts who can answer questions about how to read, watch and listen on a PC, tablet or phone.

Newton’s Laws of Motion: The Science Behind How Things Move

Newton’s Laws of Motion explain force and motion, or why things move the way they do. They are great concepts to explore by doing a science experiment. These are especially good science project ideas for kids who like to move! The concepts can often be explained using sports equipment or by understanding how amusement park rides work. These books offer ideas for physics experiments that demonstrate force and motion and the laws that govern them. Some of them provide the background information needed for the report that is often required to go with projects for the science fair.

View more…

Crystals are made when a substance has atoms or molecules that form in a very organized, repeating, 3D pattern. When we think of crystals we often think of some well-known gemstones like diamonds or rubies. But there are some very common crystals too like sugar, ice, snowflakes, and salt.

Learn more about the naturally occurring crystal formation of snow and ice by reading Curious About Snow. Find out the science behind how snow crystals form, the stories of record setting snowstorms, and an introduction to the life and work of photographer Wilson Bentley. Bentley made it his life’s work to study and photograph snowflakes. It is because of Wilson Bentley that we know no two snowflakes are alike!

Enjoy Bentley’s fascinating biography, Snowflake Bentley. You know what is really amazing about him? He made his discoveries in the 1890s! He invented and used a special device that combined a microscope with a camera to capture his microscopic pictures. The book includes some of Bentley’s actual snow crystal photographs.

You can make a scientific observation yourself or do a crystal experiment at home by growing borax crystals. Borax is a laundry detergent booster. You can find borax in the laundry room at home or in the laundry detergent section at the grocery store.

What You Need to Grow Borax Crystals at Home

Try this experiment at home! You will need:

• Glass Jar
• Pencil or Pen
• String
• Pipe Cleaner
• Borax
• Pitcher
• Measuring Cup
• Tablespoon
• Hot Tap Water
• Piece of Yarn or Cotton String, about 6 inches long

Instructions for Growing Borax Crystals

Fill a pitcher with 3 cups hot tap water. (Not so hot that you can’t touch it!) Add 3 tablespoons of Borax for each cup of water. We used 3 cups of hot tap water and 9 tablespoons of Borax. A mason jar was a great container for this. Stir the mixture.

If all of the Borax dissolves, add a little more Borax and stir. Add Borax until the water can’t dissolve it anymore – the mixture is saturated. That means the water is holding as much of the Borax as it can. In fact, this solution is supersaturated, that means the water is holding even more Borax than it normally would because the water has been heated. Now pour this supersaturated solution in the glass jar.

Make a shape out of the pipe cleaners and tie one end of the string to it. We made a snowflake shape out of pipe cleaners to see if we could make a snowflake crystal. Tie the other end of the string to the middle of the pen. Hang the pipe cleaner shape down in the jar with the pen across the top of the jar to keep it from touching the bottom of the jar. Watch what happens in the jar over the next few weeks.

Here is what our crystals looked like after growing on the pipe cleaner snowflake for about 2 weeks. The secret to growing borax crystals is having a supersaturated solution.

Science Experiment Idea

Grow three different borax crystal snowflakes. You need three glass jars that are exactly alike. Fill one with cold tap water and one with hot tap water. Get an adult to help you fill the last jar with boiling water. Now add Borax a little a time to each jar until the Borax will not dissolve anymore. The warmer the water, the more Borax will dissolve in the water. That’s because heating the water helps it become supersaturated. Now add a pipe cleaner snowflake to each jar and compare the crystals that grow over the next couple of weeks. Which jar has the most crystals? Which jar has the largest crystals?

Websites, Activities & Printables

• San Diego Natural History Museum: All That Glitters – the Splendor & Science of Gems and Minerals
• Exploratorium: The Science of Rock Candy
• Printable: Homemade Rock Crystal Candy
• Steve Spangler Science: Borax Crystal Ornaments
• Video: Sick Science – Borax Crystal Star

You can also ask a math and science expert for homework help by calling the Ask Rose Homework Hotline. They provide FREE math and science homework help to Indiana students in grades 6-12.

e-Books and Audiobooks

Use your indyPL Library Card to check out books about crystals at any of our locations, or check out e-books and audiobooks about crystals from OverDrive Kids right to your device! If you have never used OverDrive before, you can learn how to use e-books and learn how to use audiobooks.

Need more help? Ask a Library staff member at any of our locations or call, text or email Ask-a-Librarian. Additionally, the Tinker Station helpline at (317) 275-4500 is also available. It is staffed by device experts who can answer questions about how to read, watch and listen on a PC, tablet or phone.

Explore the Science of Crystals from Minerals to Gems to Snowflakes

Learn about the qualities and identifying characteristics of crystals, the amazing naturally occurring patterns that happen in both minerals and snowflakes. No two are exactly alike, and yet each one has a uniform and repeating pattern. You can study how crystals form by growing some of your own!

View more…

Matter can be a solid, a liquid, or a gas. Matter changes when you heat or cool it. When you heat a substance, its molecules move faster. As the water in a pot on the stove gets hotter, its molecules begin to move until the water is boiling. When you heat gases, the same thing happens. You can do a dramatic experiment with a bar of ivory soap to observe how heat can change matter.

What You Need

• Bar of Soap that Floats (Ivory Soap does!)
• Bowl of Water
• Paper Plate
• Microwave

Instructions

Break or cut the bar of soap into four pieces. Put the pieces on a paper plate and microwave for 1 minute. Watch the ivory soap through the microwave window.

As the soap molecules begin to heat up, the air bubbles move quickly away from each other, or expand. This is called If you roast a marshmallow, the same thing happens.

Science Experiment Idea

Choose different kinds of soap to see what will happen when they are heated up for one minute in the microwave. Heat each bar of soap up on the same kind of plate. Heat each bar for the same amount of time. The variable in this experiment is the soap, everything else has to be the same. Do the bars of soap each react the same way when they are heated up in the microwave? Why do you think so? For one soap, choose a brand that has air bubbles whipped into it, like Ivory soap. To test a bar of soap to see if it has air bubbles in it, float it in a bowl of water. A bar of soap will float if it has air bubble whipped into it.

Websites, Activities & Printables

• Encyclopedia Britannica Kids: Heated Air Expands
• BBC Bitesize: Solids, Liquids and Gases
• Chem4Kids: Looking for a Gas
• Steve Spangler Science: Balloon Expansion
• Curiodyssey: How to Blow Up a Balloon with Hot Air
• Kids Corner Science: Expanding Marshmallows

You can also ask a math and science expert for homework help by calling the Ask Rose Homework Hotline. They provide FREE math and science homework help to Indiana students in grades 6-12.

e-Books and Audiobooks

Use your indyPL Library Card to check out books about Science Experiments at any of our locations, or check out science experiment e-books and audiobooks from OverDrive Kids right to your device! If you have never used OverDrive before, you can learn how to use e-books and learn how to use audiobooks.

Need more help? Ask a Library staff member at any of our locations or call, text or email Ask-a-Librarian. Additionally, the Tinker Station helpline at (317) 275-4500 is also available. It is staffed by device experts who can answer questions about how to read, watch and listen on a PC, tablet or phone.

Solids, Liquids and Gases – When Matter Feels the Heat!

What turns ice cubes into water? What makes the steam rise from a pot of boiling water? What exactly IS matter – and how can something be all three – a solid, liquid, or gas? Here some experiments to try at home to answer these questions and the science that explains what you see.

View more…

A molecule is a group of atoms bonded together. Density is how close together the molecules of a substance are or how much mass a substance has in a given space. Buoyancy and density are related. Density affects how much an object might float, or be buoyant, or sink.

For example, if you have one cup of jelly beans and one cup of marshmallows, the jelly beans have more mass because there is more “stuff” compacted into the cup. The marshmallows have less mass because the molecules of marshmallows are NOT close together. Marshmallows are mostly air.

If you put each of those cups in a microwave to melt the jelly beans and the marshmallows, the sugar and water molecules that make up the jelly beans would almost fill the cup to the top. The sugar and water molecules that makes up the marshmallows would only fill the cup a little bit because marshmallows have less mass, they are mostly made of air. Materials with more density weigh more. A cup of jelly beans weighs more than a cup of marshmallows.

For an object to be buoyant, or float, it must have less density that what it is floating in, or, it has to have something attached to it that helps it float – like you with a life jacket on. You can make some interesting observations about density and buoyancy.

What You Need

• Drinking Glass
• Clear Soda
• Water
• Ten Raisins

Instructions

Fill one clear glass up with water and drop in five raisins. Fill another clear glass up with clear soda like sprite or 7up. Drop in five raisins. What happens when you drop the raisins in? What a few minutes – now what is happening to the raisins in each glass? Can you guess why the raisins are behaving differently?

Raisins are heavier than the water in the drinking glass. The raisins are also heavier than the soda in the drinking glass. At first, both sets of raisins sink to the bottom of the glass, they don’t float.

But the soda has little air bubbles in it – the carbonation. When there are enough of these little carbonated balloons (the bubbles) stuck to the raisins the bubbles lift the raisins to the surface making the raisin float. The bubbles are like little temporary life jackets! When the bubbles pop and the gas inside them escapes into the air…the raisins don’t have anything to help them float anymore and they sink to the bottom of the glass again.

Science Experiment Idea

Try putting other small objects in soda to see if the bubbles will attach to them and help them float to the surface of the soda. Try a penny, a toothpick, a peanut, or a skittle. Can you find something that the bubbles will float to the surface like the raisin?

Websites, Activities & Printables

• Science Bob: The Magic Ketchup Experiment
• Kids Science Challenge: That Sinking Feeling
• ZOOM: Density and Buoyancy Mixing Hot and Cold Water
• NOVA Online: Buoyancy Basics
• Printable: PBS Kids Fetch Float My Boat Experiment

You can also ask a math and science expert for homework help by calling the Ask Rose Homework Hotline. They provide FREE math and science homework help to Indiana students in grades 6-12.

e-Books & Audiobooks

Use your indyPL Library Card to check out books about Science Experiments at any of our locations, or check out science experiment e-books and audiobooks from OverDrive Kids right to your device! If you have never used OverDrive before, you can learn how to use e-books and learn how to use audiobooks.

Need more help? Ask a Library staff member at any of our locations or call, text or email Ask-a-Librarian. Additionally, the Tinker Station helpline at (317) 275-4500 is also available. It is staffed by device experts who can answer questions about how to read, watch and listen on a PC, tablet or phone.

The Science Magic of Floating – Buoyancy Explained

Books to help kids understand the science concept of density and how we see it at play when things float – both in the air and in water. Get ideas for science projects and information for the reports that are often required to go with them.

View more…

Have you ever put a coin in one of those wishing wells that is shaped like a giant funnel? The coin rolls around and around the sides of the funnel in smaller and smaller circles until it goes down the hole in the middle of the well. That coin is demonstrating centripetal force. Centripetal force is the force that pulls a thing toward the center of rotation….like the little whirlpool that forms when you drain the bathtub or like the Zinga Water Slide at Holiday World! Why IS that water slide called Zinga? Because in Swahili Zinga means “to move in a circular motion”. Lots of amusement park rides work because of the laws of physics. You can do the activity hex nut balloon to demonstrate centripetal force.

What You Need

• Balloon
• Hex Nut

Blow up a large balloon. Before you close the balloon, put a hex nut in it and then tie the end of the balloon closed. Hold the balloon between your hands and move it in a circular motion until the hex nut starts to roll around the inside of the balloon. Now stop moving the balloon and watch what happens to the hex nut. What you are seeing is centripetal force. The hex nut is on a circular path inside the balloon. Things that are moving in a curved or circular motion will slowly move toward the center of the circle, in this case, the bottom of the balloon. What sound does the hex nut make? How about a penny? A marble? Try them all and see how they behave the same or differently.

Websites, Activities & Printables

• Video: Steve Spangler Science – Screaming Balloons
• PBS Kids: Fetch Whaohler Coaster
• Funderstanding: Roller Coaster Demonstration
• Roller Coaster Physics: Design a Roller Coaster
• Griffin Museum of Science and Industry: Science at Home Roller Coaster

You can also ask a math and science expert for homework help by calling the Ask Rose Homework Hotline. They provide FREE math and science homework help to Indiana students in grades 6-12.

e-Books and Audiobooks

Use your indyPL Library Card to check out books about Science Experiments at any of our locations, or check out science experiment e-books and audiobooks from OverDrive Kids right to your device! If you have never used OverDrive before, you can learn how to use e-books and learn how to use audiobooks.

Need more help? Ask a Library staff member at any of our locations or call, text or email Ask-a-Librarian. Additionally, the Tinker Station helpline at (317) 275-4500 is also available. It is staffed by device experts who can answer questions about how to read, watch and listen on a PC, tablet or phone.

Move It! How Things Roll, Slide & Fly – the Science of Forces and Motion

Learn about the physics basics that explain how forces move things on earth. Speed, acceleration, push, pull, inertia, and friction are just some of the concepts covered. Find out the basics that explain how your bicycle works as well as the creative use of these same physics principles that result in the thrill of roller coasters.

View more…