Challenge your balancing skills with this eggs-periment! Salt forms in the shape of a perfect cube, which allows it to act as a tiny pedestal for your egg. Just try not to crack the egg while testing this one out!
Hands-On Wednesday: Test Your Senses
Today’s activity doesn’t require a lot of materials, but it’s a great test for your senses! Our muscles, tendons, joints, and inner ear all contain what is called proprioceptors. These ‘stretch receptors’ help us know positional locations, which means that we have a sense of where our hands, fingers, and other body parts are in relation to the rest of our body and the environment around us. See how well your proprioceptors are working by completing a few simple tasks with your eyes shut.
Hands-On Wednesday: Agate Candy
Observe both a physical and a chemical reaction in this tasty experiment. You may have seen agate crystals used as a colorful home decorations, but it took many years for these rock formations to develop. Agate crystals are formed when microcrystals within a hollow pocket of a host rock begin self-organizing to form patterns. The colors and arrangements of the crystals are influenced by changes in temperature, pressure, and mineral content. Luckily, our experiment only requires a physical change by being crushed, a chemical change from the oven by being heated and melted, and it takes a lot less time to develop these crystals!
Hands-On Wednesday: Paddle Boats
We are nearing the end of summer, but it is still so much fun to play in the water! With this hands-on project, we created a paddle boat that is able speed through the water by using foam based propellers to drive it. By twisting the rubber bands attached to the propellers, you build up potential energy. When the propellers are released, the energy changes to kinetic and you get to watch your boat zoom away!
