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Tag: Science Experiments
‘Oh, Ick!’ Is the Perfect Book For Your Little Scientist
One of my favorite things to do, as a homeschool mom, is to pair a fantastic book with an educational game… and I have the perfect game to pair with this book.
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‘Oh, Ick!’ That Was Fun
Science is awesome. And also gross.
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Asia Citro’s Books Are Fantastic Boredom Busters
The author and mom behind Fun at Home with Kids is full of good ideas. We’ve been trying out three books since the beginning of the summer, and this WAHM swears by them.
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Potions 101: Adding a Little Magic to Your Science (Or Science to Your Magic)
Here’s a textbook from a Hogwarts Potions class, which, remarkably enough, can also be used as a textbook for fun chemistry experiments in your own Muggle home.
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3 Picture Books Starring Girls Who Love Science
Here are three great picture book finds with science superstars who know how to have fun while learning about the scientific method. (Didn’t think that was possible, did you?)
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Teaching Patience to the On-Demand Generation
Will patience be a lost skill in our kids’ on-demand lives?
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Extract Fruit DNA at Home
Learn how to extract fruit DNA at home!
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Summer Science Fun: Ice Cube Experiments
On a lazy summer day, you can take the time to watch ice melt in these simple experiments for young children.
Continue ReadingTen Things I’ve Learned From Failed Experiments
Most will have heard the (sometimes mutilated) quote of Thomas Edison; “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work.” I don’t know if he actually …
Continue ReadingSix Great and Geeky Homeschooling Websites
There are now three homeschooling parents (Russ , Jenny and me) on the GeekDad team, and I know many other homeschoolers love the site. Recently a commenter asked if there were any “other geeky homeschooling blogs” out there. Here are …
Continue ReadingCold Weather Science Fun: Turn Boiling Water to Ice Crystals With a Flick of the Wrist
Consider this the deep winter version of the Diet Coke-Mentos experiment: Take one very cold day. In our case, it was -2F when I awoke, although the temperature sensor (on the warm side of the house) was reading 8 above when we did this. We went to the back, where it was still shady and […]
Continue ReadingExtreme Cold and Aluminum Cans Bring Interesting Results
A week and a half ago, Wisconsin saw the coldest temperatures in a decade. For several days we never made it above zero (Fahrenheit) or out of the low single digits and had double-digit below-zero temperatures at night. We’ve warmed up a bit since then, but the extreme cold weather brought some interesting results. We’re […]
Continue Reading“Cosmic Jet Racer” is a Lot of Hot Air
I recently purchased a Cosmic Jet Racer kit for my 11-year-old son. He enjoys cars and science, so I figured that this would be a fun, educational toy, which (as it says on the box) demonstrates Newton’s Laws of Motion. Unfortunately, what this kit better demonstrated was frustration and lack of interest by my child. […]
Continue ReadingHarry Potter Science Kits Are Not an Oxymoron
I got an alert about these Scholastic Harry Potter science kits from a homeschooling mom who recommends them highly. According to the seller’s website, Home and Family: The Harry Potter Activity Kits have been honored by The Oppenheim Toy Portfolio and Parenting For High Potential Magazine! They are a great item for any fan or […]
Continue ReadingBears… In… SPAAAAAAACE!!!
This is some space science we can get behind here at GeekDad. Students from Parkside and Colleridge schools helped to launch four teddies wearing space suits that they had designed. The teddies reached an altitude of just over 30 km and their temperatures were logged throughout the flight to see how they fared in the […]
Continue ReadingGeekly Reader – “The Radioactive Boy Scout” by Ken Silverstein
David Hahn was a geeky kid growing up in the suburbs of Detroit during the early 1990′s. Like most geeky kids, he was socially awkward and had an intense fascination with very narrow subject matter; in his case, science. But when David began working on his Atomic Energy Merit Badge, his rather obsessive pursuits nearly […]
Continue Reading12-year-old Revolutionizes the Solar Cell
William Yuan, a seventh-grader from Portland, OR, developed a three-dimensional solar cell that absorbs UV as well as visible light. The combination of the two might greatly improve cell efficiency. William’s project earned him a $25,000 scholarship and a trip to the Library of Congress to accept the award, which is usually given out for […]
Continue ReadingThe MythBusters are Going to the Moon!
Good news for geeks: New episodes of MythBusters start tonight! Adam, Jamie, and the rest of the team will be testing such diverse myths as tenderizing meat with explosives, fainting goats, and whether the first moon landing could have been faked. I’m particularly looking forward to that last one, partly because I’ve always loved space […]
Continue ReadingHow Many Balloons Does it Take to Launch Your Kid?
My wife threw a surprise 40th Birthday party for me, a month early. Cake and balloons were all over the place so I was having fun. As the Geeky dads stood around, we looked at the helium tank and wondered how many helium-filled balloons it would take to lift a toddler. We were purely concerned […]
Continue ReadingThe Mythbusters Want You! Retry on the Solar Death Ray
A few years ago I started finding sticks around the yard covered with strange messages that looked like they had been seared right into the wood. It turned out that the unknown words were names sacred to the world of Bionicles – and that one of his friends had taught my son how to set […]
Continue ReadingExtracting DNA From Strawberries
Our friend Aaron Rowe over at Wired Science sends along this story for our readers: California has decreed that genetic testing companies must conduct their work in CLIA-certified labs, but biologists know that some experiments are best suited for a kitchen. Writing for The Spittoon blog, Erin Cline explained that some 23andMe employees, mostly on […]
Continue ReadingScience Fair Project Isolates Plastic-Eating Microbes
In the spirit of the awesome maverick science-fair project[1], I give you Daniel Burd and his amazing plastic-eating microbes. "Almost every week I have to do chores and when I open the closet door, I have this avalanche of plastic bags falling on top of me," he said. "One day, I got tired of it […]
Continue ReadingThe Intel International Science and Engineering Fair
We all remember doing science fair projects back in our school days. For my part, I recall creating a working two-way combination speaker/microphone with some wire and the cores dug out of big old flashlight battery (what a mess, and I’m scared to know what toxics I was exposed to). Well, this week in Atlanta, […]
Continue ReadingGeekDad Wayback Machine: How Does Electricity Make Things Go?
One year ago, you were reading this by Jeffrey McManus: From KidScientist.com, the no-nonsense science blog for kids Principal Investigator: CelesteResearch Assistant: Jeffrey Date: April 21, 2007 This weekend we decided to do another experiment with a science kit. This time we used a Snap Circuits Jr. electricity set to create a motorized fan. To […]
Continue ReadingGeekDad Wayback Machine: Radios That Work for Free
One year ago, you were reading this on GeekDad, by Kevin Kelly: Crystal Radios are an old standby of GeekDads. For the early mists of time GeekDads have been showing kids how to pull radio stations from thin air with the barest snips from the basement. Here are some very simple radios that you can […]
Continue ReadingFire In The Bowl!
I was clicking through a collection of photos I’ve downloaded from my camera, but hadn’t quite gotten around to sorting around yet, when I came across this picture. It may not look like much, but it sparked a bit of a commotion last Fall. This photo is of the remnants of a suspected spontaneous combustion. […]
Continue ReadingGeekDad Wayback Machine: Which Materials Conduct Heat Best
Once year ago, you were reading this on GeekDad: Which Materials Conduct Heat Best? From Kid Scientist, the no-nonsense science blog for kidsPrincipal Investigator: Celeste McManusResearch Assistant: Jeffrey McManus Over the weekend we picked up a Ein-O Science Kit at a local game store. On Sunday we did one of the experiments in the box. The […]
Continue ReadingTen-Year-Old Makes His Own Aerogels
I haven’t been able to verify this at all, but if it’s true it might be the Best Science Fair Project Ever. Ten-year-old (at the time) William T. Wood, fresh from his 2002 science fair win for a project on silica aerogels, he decided to kick it up a notch and see if silica aerogels […]
Continue ReadingDiscover the Earth’s Magnetic Personality
A gigantic spot, large enough to swallow the Earth in one gulp, slides into view on the edge of the Sun’s surface. It creeps over a period of days across the Sun’s visible disk, growing ominously. As it nears the Sun’s center a massive solar flare erupts from the spot, triggering a coronal mass ejection […]
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