Activities, Education,

Safe Science Experiments With Household Items For Your Kids To Try

Dec 25, 2021 | Activities, Education | 0 Comments | 313

With Covid restricting the full school experience, learning through just zoom school is not that fun anymore. Kids often are intimidated by subjects like mathematics and science, and instead of being encouraged to pursue these subjects they feel further alienated from them when their learning is not imparted in a fun and interactive way. STEM subjects are notoriously for their fear-invoking reaction in kids as they often get scared of the formulas and concepts and here’s where experiential learning steps in. Science can be fun too and kids need that hands-on experience to realize that learning science and maths need not be scary and this realization and positive experience should begin at a younger age. Since schools are yet to open full-fledged, it is up to you to shorten the distance between your child and science by helping them perform science experiments at home. These science experiments can be done using kitchen ingredients or stuff you have at home, and you can make it interesting by adding in a safety goggle and white coat, to get the mood just right for some scientific discovery. Here are 5 Safe science experiments you need to try at home. 

Orange Fizz- This is a great introduction to the properties of acids and bases and you can do that by just using an orange and baking soda. Oranges, lemons, and other citrus foods are abundant with citric acid which gives them their characteristic sour taste. Baking soda which is a base is the exact opposite of soda, and as they mix it leads to the formation of many carbon dioxide bubbles. This is a delicious experiment and quite in season too! Just sprinkle some baking soda on a couple of oranges, and let your kids taste it! As the orange fizzes in their mouth causing bubbles you can explain the concept of acids and bases- a delicious way to learn! 

Lava Lamp- Who knew density could be so aesthetic?! All you need is a clean plastic bottle, some food coloring, some Alka seltzer, and some mineral oil, it can also be baby oil. It teaches your kids about the varying densities of some liquids, as the oil will float on the top as it is less dense and lighter than water. The food coloring and water since they have similar densities will sink to the bottom. The fun begins when you add the seltzer tablet to the mixture because as it dissolves it forms small gas bubbles of carbon dioxide that floats to the top as gas has the least density and since these bubbles carry some food coloring the whole process looks very aesthetic. When these gas bubbles deflate they get heavy again and sink, this keeps on happening till the tablet gets fully dissolved! 

Magic Candle- Have a magic experiment at home that turns into a fun chemistry lesson! Place tea lights or small diyas in short drinking glasses and in another tall glass pour some vinegar. Slowly add some baking soda to the vinegar and watch it foam! Once the foam has disappeared slowly tilt the longer glass into the short glass as if you were pouring air and watch the candle extinguish! This happens because the baking soda-vinegar mixture results in the formation of carbon dioxide and since it is denser than air, it means that it will sink and it stay in the long cup and when you tilt the long cup over to the short cup it means that you are adding CO2 to the shorter cup containing the candle and since candle needs normal air to burn and since CO2 is denser than that, it will push up the normal air as it sinks down which causes the candle to extinguish! 

Salt Crystals- Take out ¼ cup Epsom salt and ¼ cup hot water and mix them together, heat the cup in the microwave for an additional 20 seconds if the salt does not dissolve. When the salt has dissolved add some food coloring and pop the cup in the fridge checking on it occasionally and in 4 hours, some colorful and attractive crystals should form at the bottom of the pan. You can scoop the crystals out and store them in an airtight jar for it to be a colorful decoration in your home.  Epsom salt molecules have a unique shape which when cooled almost look like needles. Encourage your kids to further inspect these crystals under the microscope to understand the cool crystal shapes and this can be done with sugar molecules as well! 

Balloon Pop- We all know that balloons pop when pricked but do we actually know the science behind it? The reason behind the balloon pop is called the catastrophic crack propagation which means that any hole in the balloon widening is what makes it pop, not the air being slowly let out. When any hole in the balloon gets bigger, it rips, and eventually the balloon pops.  In this experiment, a piece of tape slows down the process as it adds an extra layering of covering on the balloon’s surface. To further understand this, use two pieces of tape and mark an X on the balloon where you will stick the tape and carefully push a needle on the tape and see how much time it takes for you to pop the balloon!