Experiment with rocket designs and a PVC launcher to discover how high—and how far—you can make your rockets go.

Here’s a new “spin” on an old toy. In this modern adaptation of a classic toy—the spool racer—a plastic water bottle is propelled by energy stored in a wound-up rubber band.

Watch water boil at room temperature. The temperature at which water boils depends on pressure. You can demonstrate this by dramatically lowering the pressure on a water-filled plastic syringe at room temperature.

In this activity, learners observe what happens when they give a light source like a neon glow lamp a "Bronx Cheer." The lights appear to wiggle back and forth and flicker when learners blow air through their lips. However, learners will discover that the only thing vibrating is themselves. Use this activity to explore different forms of light as well as visual perception.

In this activity, learners observe as soap bubbles float on a cushion of carbon dioxide gas. Learners blow bubbles into an aquarium filled with a slab of dry ice. Learners will be amazed as the bubbles hover on the denser layer of carbon dioxide gas, then begin to expand and sink before freezing on the dry ice. Use this activity to discuss sublimation, density, and osmosis as well as principles of buoyancy, semipermeability, and interference.

Create giant bubbles! Bubbles are fascinating. What gives them their shape? What makes them break or last? What causes the colors and patterns in the soap film, and why do they change?

In this activity, learners burn a peanut, which produces a flame that can be used to boil away water and count the calories contained in the peanut. Learners use a formula to calculate the calories in a peanut and then differentiate between food calories and physicist calories as well as calories and joules.

Turn an old CD into a spectroscope to analyze light—you may be surprised by what you see. Try pointing your CD spectroscope at the fluorescent light in your room, sunlit clouds in the sky, even your friend’s colored shirt to reveal the wavelengths of light that mix together to create the color you see!

In this fun and interactive online exhibit, the straight lines of a tile wall appear to curve. The learner moves the rows of tiles and changes the color of the grout to achieve the intriguing effect. Although the exhibit requires a computer, the concept can be adapted into a longer, hands-on exploration of optical illusions.

In this demonstration, cook a cake using the heat produced when the cake batter conducts an electric current. Because of safety concerns, this activity should be conducted as a demonstration only and learners should be kept at a safe distance.

Cardboard Automata are a playful way to explore simple machine elements while creating a mechanical sculpture. This activity was inspired by the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre, a group of automata builders based in England. Artists like Paul Spooner, Keith Newstead, and Carlos Zapata build beautiful narrative pieces using elegant mechanisms based on cams, gears, springs, and linkages. Working with simple materials, this activity is easy to get started, and may become as complex as your mechanical sculpture ideas.

Use your cell phone to explore the mini-scopic world. Open your eyes to the amazing world of the ultra-tiny when you convert your cell phone into a portable, picture-taking Miniscope using a simple plastic lens from a laser pointer.

Every cell in your body needs to take in nutrients, oxygen, and raw materials and export wastes and other substances—but it’s not just a random traffic jam! A cell membrane (also called a plasma membrane) regulates what comes in and what goes out. Explore the properties of soap films and relate them to the properties of plasma membranes and the mechanics of transport across membranes.

Here’s an easy way to find the center of gravity of a long, thin object, even if the object’s weight is unevenly distributed.

In this optics activity, learners discover that not all shadows are black. Learners explore human color perception by using colored lights to make additive color mixtures. With three colored lights, learners can make shadows of seven different colors. They can also explore how to make shadows of individual colors, including black. Use this activity demonstrate how receptors in the retina of the eye work to see color.

In this activity, learners make their own heat waves in an aquarium. Warmer water rising through cooler water creates turbulence effects that bend light, allowing you to project swirling shadows onto a screen. Use this demonstration to show convection currents in water as well as light refraction in a simple, visually appealing way.

This is a quick activity that shows how large amounts of rock and sediment are added to the edge of continents during subduction. You may ask, how can such a huge phenomenon be demonstrated quickly and cheaply? The answer is simple: with a cookie!

The phenomenon is thermal expansion of copper. This demonstration allows an observer to see the effect of heating (and cooling) a copper tube. When heated, the copper tube lengthens and thickens. When cooled, the tube shrinks. The lengthening of the rod rotates a toothpick with an attached flag to make the expansion visible and measurable.

In this activity, learners conduct an oxidation experiment that turns old pennies bright and shiny. Learners soak 20 dull, dirty pennies in a bowl of salt and vinegar for five minutes. They rinse half the pennies with water, then compare the rinsed pennies to the unrinsed after all pennies sit and dry for about an hour. Learners also observe what happens when they submerge a screw and nail in the liquid compared to a nail only half-way submerged.

In this optics/mathematics activity, learners use two hinged mirrors to create a kaleidoscope that shows multiple images of an object. Learners discover that the number of images reflected in the mirrors depends on the angle between the mirrors. Learners also observe that when they set the hinged mirrors on top of a third mirror, they create a reflector that always sends light back in the direction from which it came. Use this activity to introduce basic principles of light and optics including angle of reflection and angle of incidence.