The Science Cafe is a place you can learn about cool experiments and activities you can do at home. Give this stuff a try and let us know how it works (or may not work!). We really what to hear from you and learn about the experiments you're doing. Got an idea? Tell us about it and we'll post it here for others to give it a try.
Motion Mania Highspeed camera footage
As part of our motion mania distance learning we use a high speed camera to show what happens when a water balloon bursts or an alka-seltzer rocket takes off. It's kinda cool to see how things happen in high speed detail. There are several segments where you can count the number of frames captured and the distance an object moves to calculate the speed of the object. Click on "Read more" below to view the video in Quicktime format.
read more » Turn water into wine
This experiment is almost like magic. Two colorless liquids are mixed together and after a few moments the mixture turns a dark blue color. This would be a great "experiment" to show at a family gathering or dinner party. Since the reaction always takes the same amount of time, you know exactly when the clear liquid will change to dark. Imagine walking around with this cup and seconds before it's about to change, you announce to everyone that you'd really like a darker kind of liquid in your cup. Bang! it changes almost on command! Now that would be a cool way to start talking about how a couple of simple chemical reactions are going on at the same time to make this "clock reaction" occur. This version of the classic "iodine clock reaction" uses safe household chemicals that most people have on hand at home. read more »
Spooky Halloween Science
Halloween is rapidly approaching! You can prepare yourself with some spooky science with just stuff you probably already have around your house.
After you finish carving up a spooky shrunken head or your Halloween pumpkin why not create a batch of fake blood and flesh to decorate yourself as well? If that's a bit too much you could just mix up some gooey slime and use it to gross someone out. Of course if you scare someone too much you can always say your sorry with some Halloween flowers. With a day's notice it's pretty easy to create some orange and black flowers read more »
Kid safe Elephants Toothpaste
Elephants Toothpaste is a fun chemical reaction that creates a huge blob of soapy foam that everyone loves. You may have seen us do this experiment at COSI as part of our Extreme Science demonstration with super concentrated hydrogen peroxide. Unless you're a teacher or science museum it's difficult to obtain the 30% hydrogen peroxide needed to do this experiment. The peroxide you can buy at a drug store is only 3%. We recently have come across a version, from our friend Steve Spangler, that only requires a 6% solution of peroxide that you can buy from a local hair salon.
The basic science here is that you have hydrogen peroxide, which really should be called hydrogen dioxide, since it is just a water molecue with an extra oxygen added on. Hydrogen peroxide is H2O2, water is of course H2O. By adding another chemical called a catalyst to the peroxide, you create a chemical reaction that releases the extra oxygen attached to the water molecule. If you mix in a little detergent you can capture that released oxygen in the form of bubbles. read more »
Color Changing Potions
If you're a Harry Potter fan you may want to try your hand at mixing up this color changing potion. Grab a head of red cabbage and a few items from the kitchen and you can cook up a potion that will change it's color depending on what kinds of liquids you add to it. read more »
Film Canister Rockets
Film canister rockets are always pretty amazing considering all that powers them is a little bit of Alka-seltzer and water. The launching time is always a bit unpredictable and that just adds to the fun. read more »
Bubble Makers
Here's a way to make a simple make bubble making device using things around the kitchen. read more »
