I’ve been volunteered to help with my son’s Cub Pack as they go for their Science badges. The leader, who does something with lasers for a living, is going to light up a bulb by rubbing it with a balloon apparently.

On hearing this news I went home and made a condenser out of a Vimto bottle and imploded it.

Give me some other ideas for home science that will appeal to 8 year old boys.

Conservation of momentum is always a fun one to demonstrate.

Get one of the big kids to run in to one of the little ones?

Tick. I’d love to do something similar at the wife’s Brownie group.

Treacle can, bit of hose pipe, night light, sieved flour. Place flour in the can with the night light lit, loosely fit lid, blow hard and enjoy the bang as the finely divided flour explodes. Good discussion of combustion, surface area, what makes an explosive. And a visit from Special Branch.

Dissection? What could go wrong?

get yourself some calcium carbide and the world’s your oyster….

you can put a bit in a plastic bottle of water, put the lid on, and play a really really dangerous game of pass the parcel.. (DON’T!!).

DrP

Was going to suggest something similar to murray. Google exploding custard powder for some how to guides.

Saxon Rider could probably hook you up with some plutonium now that he’s sold his car on Gumtree.

http://www.education.com/activity/article/Centripetal_Force_middle/

Outside and involves water and the potential to get soaked… kids will love it 🙂

Diet Coke and Mentos?

Baking soda and vinegar?

Drinks bottle rocket?

Non Newtonian fluids are always fun.

Make a lollipop stick bridge type thing and see how much weight it can support.
The bonus is you have to eat the lollipops first. double win.

Bike wheel gyroscope. Needs an office chair.

Do some proper science. Get them all doing some mindnumbingly tedious task like examining and grading pebble sizes at different distances from a stream to test if there is a relationship between pebble size and distance from the stream. then repeat the experiment at a number of different sites, and then across a number of different rivers. When they’ve published their results, which will probably be inconclusive, cut their pocket money by 50%

#realscience

Apple power.(Granny Smiths are best)
Mix up some zinc and copper contacts to power an LED.
uTubey link

Got a working microwave? slab of Butter? you can work out the speed of light…

Non newtoniN fluid in a speaker

Conservation of momentum is always a fun one to demonstrate.

Go out to the nearby playground and demonstrate conservation of angular momentum by leaning in and out on a roundabout.

Non-newtonian liquids (cornflour in water, etc.) are a bit dry but easy to set up.

Can you borrow a strobe light and set up some standing waves on a length of plucked string?

Show them how to make an atlatl for spear throwing, then take them down the park to try it out. Physics innit!

Non-Newtonian fluids can be made more fun by games such as “pass the non-Newtonian fluid” – the least attentive kid usually gets slimed 😆

Got a working microwave? slab of Butter? you can work out the speed of light…

You can also work it out with a tray of marshmallows, and it’s better to eat afterwards 😉

Love the speed of light in a microwave. Google suggests chocolate which may hold the children’s interest as they can eat it afterwards.

When I was 12, our physics teacher showed us a film of how this special effect was achieved
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCOp14OHJyg[/video]
It was back in the sixties, but I still remember how it was done, if you need details.

Grant THompson king of random has great stuff on his youtube channel

http://Www.thekingofrandom.com

Have you tried hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea)?

Make an electromagnet from an iron nail and a coil of wire plus a battery. Extend this to making a compass?

Make a model volcano using ethanoic acid (vinegar) and sodium hydrogen carbonate (baking powder)

Make an electric motor from a battery, paperclips, wire and a magnet or two.

Use tea lights under a (pierced sides) tin can to make a tiny cooker to cook tiny pancakes.

Look on instructables, here

http://www.instructables.com/

Eldest child (age 11) was crafting a project for school this week. He set up a series of experiments with static electricity, all of which the cubs could do themselves

For example, run two balloons on a surface (they used the couch) to see if the ballon took a charge and whether they attracted or repelled each other; use static on a ballon to pull a straw around etc.

Hands on stuff for them to have a go…

Have you tried hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea)?

I don’t get invited to those sort of parties. 🙁

Cartesean divers?

If you can pull this off you will be a legend

Maybe pull it off is the wrong phrase but you know what I mean

Cloud chamber with an ice pack, sandwich box and a torch? If CERN can do it so can you!

Well, if you can get your hands on some Ammonium Dichromate and some Mercury Thiocyanate (and I suspect, a fume hood), you can summon Satan. 😀

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8uAs7UQ2tY[/video]

Grant THompson king of random has great stuff on his youtube channel

All cool stuff – but most of it isn’t too kid friendly.

You need someone for whom zafety is number one prior-ty:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPhZzsAgc7Q[/video]

https://www.youtube.com/user/CrazyRussianHacker

I’ve got a Rubens Tube you can borrow 🙂

Its about 8ft long though so a bit tricky to transport.

for a bit of home science with actual home stuff (once you’ve spattered cornflower all over the place and taken your eyebrows off with custard powder)… its seems to have fallen off the internet but there was footage of Margaret Thatcher in her kitchen making and demonstrating Universal Indicator with boiled red cabbage

If you have 3 sticks and 4cc of mouse blood you could summon the anthropomorphic representation of Death?

You could all go for a Curry afterwards.