Hold the blower under the basket and blow air up through it. The moving air will agitate the balls, simulating the kinetic behavior of a gas. Watching the colored ball will allow you to follow the ...

Make a simple mini-motor.Give the coil a spin to start it turning. If it doesn’t keep spinning on its own, check to make sure that the coil assembly is well balanced when spinning, that the enamel has ...

Gelatin is colloidal—its large molecules are suspended in solution in such a way that they don't settle out—and so it scatters enough of the laser beam to make it visible. Red dye in the red gelatin ...

The reflective power of a given surface is called the albedo ("whiteness" in Latin), which is the ratio of reflected energy compared to the amount hitting the surface. An opaque object that reflects ...

Light becomes completely polarized parallel to the surface at one particular angle of reflection, called Brewster’s angle. Brewster’s angle for water is 53 degrees; for glass, it is 56 degrees; for ...

A sharpened pencil, at least 6 inches (15 centimeters) long A long, straight, narrow pin—the narrower, the better A sheet of paper A vinyl record in reasonably good condition without too many ...

When you vocalize, you cause air molecules to vibrate. These vibrating molecules strike the rubber balloon membrane. The membrane vibrates, causing the mirror to wiggle in turn. The laser light ...

Speed up your spin.Newton found that an object in motion tends to remain in motion, in a straight line and at a constant speed, unless it is acted upon by a net force. Today, we call this observation ...

The pneumatic tire and the chain drive, followed by the development of gears, revolutionized bicycling in the later 1800s. In the last fifteen years, there has been a revolution of sorts in the ...

One of the most exciting exercises I ever did as a kid was to make a scale model of the Solar System. Most of the pictures in my books made the distance between planets seem small and easy to travel.

The purpose of any leavener is to produce the gas that makes bread rise. Yeast does this by feeding on the sugars in flour, and expelling carbon dioxide in the process. While there are about 160 known ...

Make models of the earth and moon Make a model Earth by rolling out a small ball of green or blue clay. The ball should be between ½ to ¾ inches (about 1.5 to 2 cm) in diameter (click to enlarge photo ...