The homemade pen cap sinker experiment – demonstrate Pascal’s law with a pen cap.

Four blue, red, black and green BIC pens and four pen caps

Pascal’s law has many practical applications, including hydraulic lifts, brakes, and jacks. It is also used in many industrial and manufacturing processes, such as in the production of plastics, metals, and chemicals. Here we will demonstrate Pascal’s law with a pen cap and plastic bottle.

Amerigo Vespucci at the ship parade in the NYC harbor

When a person stretches out flat, more water pushes against them because their body is spread out more, which creates more upward force and causes them to float. Conversely, when they curl up into a ball, less water is pushing against them, which reduces the upward force and makes them sink. Want to test this…

An original Mathmos lava lamp, model "Astro", as it was sold during the 1990s

Lava lamps were immensely popular in the 1970’s. For some reason, your parents thought it was very fun to sit there and watch colorful liquid in a bottle swirl aimlessly around. They probably even chanted “Oh wow, the colors, the colors.

Eggs in salted water and in pure water from Six Weeks Of Vacation (1880)

Density is a measure of how much matter takes up a certain amount of space or volume. The more matter you can pack into a certain space, the denser it is. Although we often confused the two, density and weight are actually two different measurements. Weight is defined as the mass of an object times…

A graduated cylinder filled with various liquids to illustrate density

In our floating experiment, we touched on the topics of buoyancy. But in reality, flotation is also affected by other scientific principles as well. Here, let Geek Slop demonstrate…

Bubbles that you find in liquids are simply air that is trapped inside the liquid. Soap bubbles work on a similar principle but with a bit more complexity.

Water droplet lying on a damask textile due to surface tension and low absorption of textile

Yep, it’ true. Even though it seems as slick as snot, water has a certain ‘stickiness’ to it. Conduct this experiment to demonstrate the “stickiness” of water.

Heating an object sealed inside another object can produce some exciting results. Heat causes things to expand (or get larger). Cold causes things to contract (or get smaller). Let’s demonstrate with this experiment.

We all know how glue or tape can be used to stick two objects together. These adhesives cause the two objects to cohere (or adhere) together. Cohesion is the word for this sticking force. Cohesion also occurs on common everyday objects – rain to a car’s windows, dust to the ceiling fan, chewing gum on…

Most substances have three states – solid, liquid, and gas. When they go from a solid to a gas, they usually turn into a liquid in between. Ice is a good example. It first melts into a liquid and then evaporates into a gas. Sublimation is when a chemical compound turns from a solid to…