Ten Projects to Spark Your Child's Scientific Interest

Here are ten fun and relatively easy projects to spark your child's interest in science. These are all easy projects that your child can do, some with your help and some without your help. Of course, they all need to be completed under adult supervision. These projects could also be used in a science fair.

1. Erupting Volcano-You will need a 20-ounce pop bottle, an eighth of a cup of water, one tablespoon of baking soda, a fourth a cup of vinegar, orange food coloring, one tablespoon of liquid dish soap, and a small square of tissue. These are for the actual eruption. You need to cut a piece of plywood big enough to hold the volcano, plus an additional ten inches on each side. This will help prevent the lava from staining whatever the volcano is sitting on. Mix six cups of flour with two cups of salt, four tablespoons of vegetable oil, and two cups of water to make play dough to form the volcano. Mix until the dough is smooth, but firm. Build the dough around the bottle, with the lid off to create the mountain. You should make channels for the lava to run down and also open the top around the volcano opening to make a crater. You should also build up the dough a little around the base to help keep the lava on the board also. You can then add trees with toys, or aquarium plants to make it more realistic after you have painted the volcano with spray paint. You will need to put the water, soap, food coloring, and vinegar in the bottle. Wrap the baking soda in the tissue piece and drop in the bottle when you are ready to make the volcano erupt. There is a chemical reaction that occurs, which is NaHCO₃ + CH₃COOH, which yields Na⁺ + H₂O + CO₂ + CH₃COO^-. What this means is that carbon dioxide (CO₂) is released, which creates the fizzing.

2. Blowing up a Balloon Without Your Mouth-You will need, an empty 20-ounce pop bottle, a half cup of baking soda, one cup of vinegar, a funnel, and a balloon. Pour the vinegar into the bottle. Fill the balloon with the baking soda. Place the balloon over the bottle so the baking soda in the balloon hangs over the side. Lift the balloon up and the baking soda will pour into the bottle mixing with the vinegar. This will cause a reaction between the two causing the balloon to inflate. It might be helpful to blow the balloon up once by mouth, so it is easier to inflate. The chemical reaction is NaHCO₃ + CH₃COOH, which yields, CH₃COONa + H₂O + CO₂.

3. Assimilate a Tornado­-You will need two 2-liter bottles, duct tape, silicon caulking, water, and a drill. Take both of the caps off the bottles and glue them together with caulking by the top of each, so they will still screw onto the bottles. Use a drill to drill a ½ inch hole in the centers of the glued together caps. Wrap a piece of duct tape around the caps to ensure they will not leak. Screw the caps on one bottle and fill the other bottle ¾ of the way full. Screw the empty bottle on top of the bottle that contains water. Hole the duct taped area with one hand and the bottom of the empty bottle with the other hand. Turn the bottle so the empty bottle is on bottom and swirl a few times. A tornado will form as the water drains into the empty bottle.

4. How to Peel an Egg without Cracking It­-You will need a few hard-boiled eggs, plastic cups, and white vinegar. All you do is place the eggs in the vinegar for a few days. You can then effortlessly rinse the shell egg off. The vinegar dissolves the egg shell because the vinegar is acidic and will eat the calcium carbonate egg shell. The eggs will feel rubbery when they are cleaned up. You may also do this experiment by hypothesizing that different liquids will do different things, and come up with some liquids of your own, such as milk, water, and coffee.

5. Build a Cell and Tell How Each Part Works­-You will need a box or two of light colored Jell-o or clear gelatin, and all sorts of candy to make the inter-workings of the cell. Airheads work very well for the Golgi body and Endoplasmic Reticulum.

6. Demonstrate Chromatography-You will need three coffee filters, a quarter, one black water soluble marker, one green water soluble marker, two cups, and water. Draw a circle in the middle of an open coffee filter tracing around the quarter with one of the markers. Do the same with the other marker on the other filter. Fill one of the cups with water. Place one coffee filter each over the two separate empty cups. Dip your finger into the water and place your finger in the middle of your drawn circle on one of the filters placed on the cup. Do the same on the other filter also. If there are any dry areas inside your drawn circles, dip your finger in water and put in the middle of the circle again. The wet spot will move through the filter and make the marker colors separate into different colors. Ink is basically a fast drying liquid, so the pigment from the dried ink will dissolve into the water on the filter. These rewetted ink pigments will then move through the filter paper and depending on the pigment; it will have a different attractions to the paper, moving different distances. This is called chromatography.

Try this with other colored water soluble markers too and see what other results you get.

7. Show Osmosis with Potatoes-You will need two dishes, a potato, and salt. Fill both of the dishes with water. Put two tablespoons of salt in one of the dishes. Cut the potato lengthwise into many pieces. The potato should have a flat be flat on both sides. Place half of the potato pieces in one pan and the other half in the other pan. Let the potato pieces soak for at least 20 minutes. Compare the potato pieces. You will notice that the potato pieces that are in the regular water are still crisp. The pieces in the salt water will be limp and mushy. This is due to osmosis. When you have a higher concentration and a lower concentration, water will move to even this out. You might want to look up the terms isotonic, hypotonic, and hypertonic for a better explanation.

8. Create Recycled Paper-You will need sheets of old newspaper, pantyhose, a hanger bent into a circle or whatever shape you want the finished paper to be in, water, a blender, paper towels, a bowl, an iron, and a cutting board. First you need to rip the newspaper into little pieces; this is a great step for kids to have fun with. Place the paper into the blender and add hot water letting the mixture set for approximately ten minutes. Blend the paper well to make a soupy paper mixture. Cover your hanger with panty hose to create a screen. Put the screen over your bowl and pour your liquid paper mixture onto the screen. Let it sit until the liquid has drained into the bowl. Place the screen between two paper towels and iron on a cutting board to get the excess water out. Remove the towels and peel your new recycled paper from the screen.

9. Demonstrate Why Seals Can Swim in the Cold Ocean and Not Get Sick-You will need a clean clear bottle, food coloring, and baby oil. Pour water into the bottle until it is halfway full. Add a few drops of food coloring and mix. Pour in baby oil to fill the bottle up to the neck. Put the lid on the bottle and shake. You will notice that the oil and water do not mix. Instead the oil will float up the top after a little while. Seals do not get damage from the cold icy water because their coats are very oily. The water never touched their skin.

10. Demonstrate the Different pH of Solutions-You will need a head of red cabbage, a grater, pot with water to cover the grated cabbage, a strainer, and different solution including vinegar, soda pop, lemon juice, water, washing detergent mixed in water, water mixed with baking soda, and anything else you can come up with. You will need to grate the cabbage into small pieces and then boil in the water for 20 to 30 minutes until the water turns dark purple. Pour the fluid into another container while straining to remove the cabbage. The water that was drained and kept should be bluish purple. Put your solutions into separate containers, such as plastic cups. The one with plain water is your control. Add a few drops of the cabbage, water juice with an eye dropper. Note the color changes. If the solution is acidic, it will turn pink. If it is basic it will turn green. Stick coffee filter in the solutions to record the colors. Red cabbage has pigments called anthocyanins in it. These pigments are what give it a red color. The pigments are flavonoids.

Mad Scientist Network, "Cabbage Juice-pH indicator." Mad Scientist Network. URL: (http://www.madsci.org/experiments/archive/859332497.Ch.html).

Families with Purpose, "Rubber Egg in Vinegar Experiment." Families with Purpose. URL: (http://www.familieswithpurpose.com/rubber-egg-vinegar-experiment.html).

John Seach, "How to Make a Volcano Model." Volcano Live. URL: (http://www.volcanolive.com/model.html).

Kids Corner, "Blow Up Balloons-With No Blowing." Kids Corner. URL: (http://www.kidscorner.org/sciencefair.php).

United States Geological Survey, "Soda Bottle Volcano." USGS. URL: (http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Outreach/Publications/GIP19/chapter_one_soda_bottle_volcano.pdf).

Alicia Potter, "Five Easy Experiments." Family Fun. URL: (http://familyfun.go.com/parenting/learn/activities/feature/famf_science/famf_science.html).

Yes Magazine, "Tornado in a Bottle." Yes Magazine. URL: (http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projects/21/832/139f3c3e54790f6a966bbd96bf805320.html).

Reeko's Mad Scientist Lab, "Top Secret Section F." Reeko's Mad Scientist Lab. URL: (http://www.spartechsoftware.com/reeko/MoreExperimentsSortCategory.htm).