Hot Science Experiments Posts
How To: Build a rain gauge
In this how to video, you will learn how to build your very own rain gauge. You will need tape, scissors, rain gauge ruler, and a jar. First, go to the website shown and print and cut out the ruler on the screen. Next, cut the tape strips. You will need them to be about 5 inches in length. Next, attach the rain gauge ruler to the jar. You will do this by placing the ruler on the tape and place the ruler on the jar. Make sure the ruler is aligned with the bottom edge of the jar. Take the secon...
How To: Make potassium trichromate
In this how-to video, you will learn how to make potassium trichromate. You will need potassium chromate and dichromate. It is easy to go between the two. You can add a base to the dichromate to make the chromate. It will go from orange to yellow. The trichromate can be produced. You will need nitric acid, potassium dichromate, and sodium disulphate. First, make a solution of sodium sulphate. Take a long test tube and the potassium dichromate to it. Add double the volume of concentrated nitri...
How To: Experiment with two-dimensional motion
Motion can be studied in different dimensions. Study of motion of a body in a straight line is called motion in one dimension. A falling body can be called as motion in one dimension. Things can also move sideways when they fall at the same time. This is also called as projectile motion and it is a study of motion in two dimensions. When studying projectile motion we can neglect one dimension of the motion and study the other dimension obtaining the results of motion in that dimension. If a b...
How To: Find light photons with LEDs & photosensitive paper
In this video Dr. Carlson demonstrates the properties of light. Light is like a wave and it is also like a particle, which means that it comes in small packets. To demonstrate how we know that light behaves like packets of energy, he uses LED’s in different colors and a sheet of phosphorescent paper. When light with a high enough energy shines on the paper it will cause the paper to glow.
How To: Experiment with magnets and eddy currents
Eddy Currents are little circles of electricity created when metals are moved by magnets or even when magnets are moved by metals. To understand this practically take a regular piece of cardboard and drop it in between a horse shoe magnet. It drops normally with out being effected by the magnet. This is because the cardboard does not conduct electricity. Therefore it does not cause any eddy currents. But instead if you use an aluminum piece in the same way, it falls very slowly, because alumi...
How To: Make elephant toothpaste with H2O2 and Nal
Making a Elephant Toothpaste Volcano!
How To: Make ice cream and explore the ingredient salt
In this Education video tutorial you will learn how to make ice cream and explore the ingredient salt. Ingredients are a cup of milk, sugar, vanilla, some salt, ice and two plastic bags. Add two tablespoons of sugar to one cup of milk, a quarter teaspoon of vanilla, stir it up and pour it in to a plastic bag. Put this bag in another bigger plastic bag, add some ice and about half a cup of salt. Seal the bag and start mashing it. After about 10 minutes, it will turn into ice cream. When salt i...
How To: Create an acid-base indicator using purple cabbage
Purple cabbage is a natural indicator and this video teaches you how to easily prepare purple cabbage in the comfort of your own home to be used as an acid and base indicator. Take one leaf of your purple cabbage, tear it into smaller pieces and place all the pieces into a beaker or bowl of boiling water for an hour. Collect the liquid from your mixture into a bottle. You’ll notice that the liquid is now dark blue or purple at which point is neutral. It is ready to be used as an indicator. ...
How To: Stack liquids experiment at home
In this how-to video, you will learn how to stack liquids at home. This will make for a great experiment. You will need a tall, transparent container, molasses or honey, liquid soap, water, vegetable oil, and rubbing alcohol. You might want food coloring and items to float in the container. First, add the molasses to the container. Next, add the dish soap and water. You can add food coloring to this. Make sure to pour it on the side of the container. Add the vegetable oil on top of the water....
How To: Make an erupting volcano with soap
In this video tutorial, viewers learn how to make an erupting volcano with soap. Begin by adding some vinegar into a flask/baker. Then add some soap into the vinegar and stir it by shaking the flask/baker. Users may choose to add some food coloring to make the mix look more like lava. In a separate, add some water and baking soda. Then stir it to mix. Pour the baking soda solution into the soap and vinegar mixture. This video will benefit those viewers who are interested in science and experi...
How To: Determine the air amount in packing peanuts w/ acetone
How much air is actually inside a packing peanut? There is a simple experiment to conduct to see what is leftover. To begin, pour 200 ml of acetone into a glass container and add approximately 1800 ml of packing peanuts. Stir with a wooden spoon to dissolve. The video's author starts with the 1800 ml and realizes that that isn't enough. He then keeps adding until he has added an entire large bucket to the original 200 ml of acetone. After all are dissolved, all that is left in the glass conta...
How To: Do a sodium and water experiment
In this video tutorial, viewers learn how to do a sodium and water experiment. Sodium is a silver metal that is very reactive. When exposed oxygen in the air, an outer coding of sodium oxide will form. Simply drop a piece of sodium into a cup of water. When dropped in water, sodium reacts to form sodium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. The sodium will constant move around in the water. Sometimes the heated reaction will cause the nitrogen gas to ignite. Under the right condition, it may even cause...
How To: Freeze a beaker to wood
Chemistry can be very fun when you create different kinds of reactions between elements. Note that caution should be employed to not harm yourself while performing these reactions. Ammonium Tricynate reacts with barium hydroxide octahydrate in endothermic form. Endothermic reactions are those which absorb heat from the surroundings during the reactions as opposed to exothermic reactions which produce a lot of heat during the reaction. When endothermic reaction occurs, depending up on the inte...
How To: Perform pendulum gravity experiments
The video starts with the presenter explaining that he will be talking about harmonic oscillators, not the harmony of anything in sound, but something that moves back and forth in roughly the same speed back and forth.
How To: Do a "free fall" experiment to understand orbits
This video illustrates how to do a "free fall" experiment to understand orbits. Here are the following steps:
How To: Experiment with pressure using a vacuum
In this video Dr. Carlson does several experiments to illustrate how a vacuum works. A vacuum is created when all the air is removed from an object.
How To: Freeze water by boiling acetone
You can freeze water by boiling it. To do this you will need a Vacuum pump. Vacuum pump can be used to suck out air from a container and create vacuum in it. Take a bell jar. Now connect the vacuum pipe into it and suck out the air from it. Take a flash and add little bit of water to it. Now we want to freeze this water. Add some acetone to it. Acetone boils and evaporates very quickly. Add a few chips of marble to it. These will enable in boiling of the water. Now set this flask in the bell ...
How To: Make a small electromagnet at home
Want to make your own electromagnet? It's easier than you'd think. It's so easy, in fact, that this video guide can present a complete and thorough overview of the entire magnet making process in just over two minutes. For complete instructions and a list of necessary materials, watch this free home science how-to.
How To: Experiment with temperature using glow sticks
In this video from Dr. Carlson, users are shown how to witness the effects of the relationship between temperature and matter firsthand, using light-sticks. For the experiment, users need 3 beakers (or vessels of the sort,) and 3 light-sticks of the same color, shape, and light. To test the range, each beaker must correspond to one of the following states: room temperature, ice-water, or boiling water. Deposit a stick in each of them and observe for two minutes. Thus, one will see how the ato...
How To: Mix liquid "glow stick" colors to make white light
This a video tutorial that is showing its audience how to mix liquid glow stick colors in order to make a white light. The first step is to gather your supplies. To complete this scientific experiment you will need to get a few different glow sticks, preferably red, blue, and green. The next step is to turn all of your glow sticks on. The third step is to cut open the glow sticks and add them to separate cups. Next you can mix the green and the blue light together. Then finally add the red li...
How To: Make a Sugar Snake with Sulfuric Acid and Sugar
Sugar (a carbohydrate) is dehydrated with concentrated sulfuric acid. Since a carbohydrate was once considered just hydrated carbon, if you remove the water, carbon would be left over. The acid rips the water out of the sugar and the heat generated by this reaction causes the water to turn to steam. A black mass of carbon is produced.
How To: Chemiluminescence, oxidation of luminol
In this how to video, you will learn about Chemiluminescence and the oxidation of Luminol. The first solution is Luminol and NaOH. The second is K3 and H202. Luminol is used to detect blood in crime scenes. It reacts with Iron in Hemoglobin. As you can see in the example, it illuminates the chemicals in the dark. This is why it is very useful for crime scenes. It can be used even if the blood is not visible with day light. Thus, it is an invaluable chemical in the name of science and justice....
How To: Cunduct a viscous remanent magnetization experiment
In this Education video tutorial you will learn how to conduct a viscous remanent magnetization (VRM) experiment. The purpose of this experiment is to measure the VRM decay vs time. You have to take two Orbo rotor magnets and mount them on a base. Mount two samples of the ferromagnetic tore used in the Orbo motor for the stator coils on a rotating disk. The disk can be rotated by a simple brushless motor. When the ferromagnetic core moves in front of the static magnet, an optical sensor detec...
How To: Splint a broken bone in an emergency
This video is about how to splint a broken bone in an emergency situation. You will need two sticks. For a broken arm you will place the sticks on the front and back of the arm. Now tear a shirt, piece of clothing or other cloth into strips. Tightly wrap the strips of cloth around the arm and the sticks on either side of the fracture - near the elbow and near the wrist. If you have a severe break where part of the bone is sticking out through the skin, take two strips of cloth and wrap one at...
How To: Make clouds inside a bottle
Using a huge jar and with water colored with die in it you can make clouds. To do this set up the apparatus as shown in the video. Now open up the top valve and blow air into the jar. Now this causes the air inside to be compressed as we are pushing more air into the confined jar. This creates a high pressure inside the ball. To understand how clouds are formed you need to know two concepts. The first concept is that as pressurized gas expands it cools. The second thing is that warm gases can...
Underwater Fireworks: How to Light Sparklers Submerged in Liquid
In this video tutorial, you will learn how to use sparklers, or fireworks underwater. You'll need some sparklers, tape, glass container, a lighter, and, of course—water.
How To: Do a cool volcano experiment at home
In this Education video tutorial you will learn how to do a cool volcano experiment at home. You will need a bottle of tonic water, mentos and some paper. Wrap the paper around the mentos to make a tube for releasing the mentos in to the bottle. Now pour about half a packet of mentos in to the paper tube and prevent them from falling off with your finger. Now open the bottle of tonic water and release all the mentos from the paper tube in to the bottle all at once. The tonic water will gush o...
How To: Do a flaming ice experiment
In this fascinating "how to" video, you will see how a simple process creates the illusion of ice that is burning. Only a few items are needed to enact this scientific experiment. As the narrator describes, "Calcium carbide reacts with water to form acetylene gas." To illustrate, the video shows a bowl of ice cubes, to which the special ingredient is added. As the ice melts into water, it reacts with the calcium carbide, forming the high flammable acetylene gas, which is often used in welding...
How To: Make a rain gauge
In this how to video, you will learn how to make a rain gauge. First, you will need a 2 liter bottle to collect the rain. You will also need scissors, a ruler, and a permanent marker. First, take the bottle cap off of the soda bottle. Next, cut the top of the bottle off. Now, collect some pebbles and put it at the bottom of the bottle. This will keep the bottle in place. Pace the top of the bottle on top to use a as a funnel. Now, take a ruler and measure 7 cm high on the rain gauge. Mark it ...
How To: Build a simple electromagnet
Electromagnets are super cool to experiment with. In this educational video, Science Bob teaches us about electromagnets - what they are and how to build one of your own. These magnets are are very powerful and make an extremely neat experiment for the science fair. Electromagnets are unique in the sense that they convert electricity into magnetism. Try this experiment with your kids for a unique science lesson.
How To: Draw the Lewis dot structure for sulfate
TTUchme1010 teaches viewers how to draw the lewis dot structure for sulfate. The formula for this is SO4^2-. 2- means we will have to add 2 electrons into the lewis dot structure. First, we will have Sulfur in the middle with Oxygen surrounding it. Sulfur is in group 6A so it have 6 valence electrons and oxygen has six, so fill this all in around the elements. Now, you have to add in the 2 extra electrons onto the most electronegative atom. This will be oxygen. Now, you should start bonding t...
How To: Use Google to easily convert kilos to pounds
The video describes how to convert any unit of weight to any other unit. The example used here is conversion of pounds to kilos. Going to the Google homepage, the desired conversion should be typed in the search box directly, e.g., "150 pounds in kilos". Click the "Google search" button and Google will use its built-in converter to give the result, in this case, 150 pounds is equal to 68.0388 kilos. This, if it is ones own weight, will of course make anyone feel better, because kilos look les...
How To: Draw a Lewis dot structure for nutrite anion
This video shows you how to draw the Lewis electron dot structure for the nitrite anion- first you start by drawing the symbols o, n and o, in that order, and then you proceed to draw two dots on the top of the n, and one on each other side.On the 'o' on the far left, you draw two dots on the top, and two dots on the left, putting just one dot on the bottom and the left- the right 'o' mirrors this pattern.Next you link all three letters with two lines, using the single dots on the left and ri...
How To: Calculate weight average atomic mass of an element
In Chemistry weight of some elements are measure in the form of Average Atomic Mass. Isotopes are found in different abundances in nature. Certain elements have many isotopes and certain elements have few isotopes. Regardless of the number of the natural isotopes, the weighted average mass takes into consideration not only the mass of each isotope, but what also its natural abundance in terms of percent as found in the nature. So when you have the mass of two isotopes of an element and are gi...
How To: Convert grams to moles for chemistry
310tutoring shows viewers how to easily convert Grams to Moles for Chemistry. If you have 120 grams NaOH and we want this in moles we need a periodic table. Now, you need to figure out what the mass is of each individual element in NaOH. You need the mass of Na, O and H. Na mass is 23, O has 16 and H is 1. Add all of these up to get the molar mass of NaOH is 40 g/mol. Now use this to convert 120 g to moles. Now take 120 grams NaOh and multiply this by 1 mol NaOH/ 40 grams NaOH. You can cancel...
How To: Calculate weighted atomic mass
This video is about Level 2 atomic concepts, specifically the Pennium Lab. This helps you understand how atomic masses are derived for the periodic table. This teacher demonstrates how to do the calculation. He first reviews the Isotopes as they are different masses of the same type of atoms. He uses chromium as his example. It has a different number of neutrons in the nucleus. Using the equation, it could have either 26, 28, 29 or 30, with its 24 protons. So he subtracts the atomic number fr...
How To: Measure pH levels with paper and meters
If you want to know the best way to get an accurate pH measurement, this shows the lab equipment needed and the processes used. When doing chemical reactions, sometimes the acidity or the basicity is important. This is usually defined as pH and measuring it can be very useful for getting the reaction right. There are a few ways to measure pH, and the simplest, cheapest, most reliable method is paper. But that's not all. See a whole lot of ways in this two-part video.
How To: Calculate friction in a body without acceleration
This video shows the viewer how to calculate friction in a body that it is not accelerating. The simple answer is that the force of friction will be equal to the force needed to maintain the constant speed. This means that is you pull a wooden block along a carpet at a constant speed and a Newton meter between you and the block measures 5 Newton’s then the force of friction between the carpet and the block is exactly 5 Newton’s. If the object is accelerating then this rule does not apply.For ...
How To: Make a baking soda volcano project
In this video, we learn how to make a homemade volcano. You will need: 6 cups of all purpose flour, 2 cups of salt, 4 tablespoons of cooking oil, an empty plastic soda bottle, dish washing liquid, food coloring (optional), vinegar, 2 tablespoons of baking soda, a cooking pan, a mixing bowl and spoon, 2 cups of warm water, plastic container. First, add 6 cups of water to large mixing bowl. Now, add 2 cups of salt, 2 cups of water and 4 tablespoons of cooking oil. Mix this together with your sp...
How To: Build a simple barometer with household materials
ARHSphysics shows viewers how they can build a simple barometer using household items! First, you need to get a container that is the height of an index card. Your best bet is to get an empty soup can of food can. Make sure you wash the can. Now, you will need a latex glove, cut a semi circle from the glove and attach this to the top of the can using a rubber band. Get two straws and attach them together at the ends. Cut a slit in each one and attach the straws. Attach the straw to the top of...