Strawberry DNA Extraction

You have probably heard about DNA but you may not know why DNA is so important. DNA is present in every cell in every living thing. DNA is responsible for all of the genetic traits of a living organism. In humans, DNA determines your hair color, eye color, how tall you are, etc. In plants and animals, DNA does the very same thing. In the case of the strawberry, the DNA determines the size of the strawberry, the color, the sweetness, the number of seeds, and all of the other genetic traits of the strawberry.

Even though DNA is really important, sometimes it can be hard to think of DNA as an actual "thing" because we cannot see DNA. In this experiment, you will be able to extract the DNA from the strawberry cells and look at it and even feel it. Now, when you extract the DNA, what you will see is many, many strands of DNA wrapped together, you will not be able to see a single strand of DNA.

For this experiment, you will need a strawberry, dish soap, salt, a baggie, and some rubbing alcohol. For more information and instructions on how to extract the DNA from a strawberry, click here.

Soda Bottle Terrarium

An ecosystem is made up of both the living and nonliving things in the environment. One of the most important aspects of an ecosystem's health is the quality of the water. In this activity, you will explore a living ecosystem by creating your own, self sustaining terrarium. A terrarium is a small garden that is able to water itself by recycling the water. The plants in the terrarium give off water(transpiration) that is then collected on the plastic(condensation) and then the water slides down the sides of the terrarium and waters the plant. Check out the videos to find out the materials and instructions on how to make your own self-sustaining terrarium. For more information, click here.

Floating Letters Experiment

There are so many fun tricks that we can do because of science! In this experiment, you will make words written in dry erase marker float around on the plate! You will need some simple materials from around your house to do this experiment. Materials include a plate, some new dry erase markers, and water. Check out the video link to see this experiment in action. Because dry erase ink is not soluble in water, when water is poured onto the dry erase words written on the plate, the words will actually peal themselves up off of the plate and float around. Try drawing a heart or other shapes and see if you can get those to float! Click here for more instructions.

Maple Syrup Snow Candy

One of the most fun things about January is the arrival of snow! Although there are many fun things about snow, did you know that we can actually use the snow and these cold temperatures for some cool science experiments!

In this activity, you can use some ingredients from your kitchen along with some fresh fallen snow to make a wonderful candy treat. You will need real maple syrup, a thermometer, a pan for boiling, popsicle sticks, and of course, fresh snow!

To create the maple syrup snow candy, you will boil the maple syrup to remove most of the water content and make the maple syrup mostly sugar. Then, you will need to watch the temperature of the boiling syrup to get it to the soft candy stage. When the syrup gets just to the right temperature, take it off the heat and pour it over the snow. This will cause the syrup to cool quickly and you will be ready to make candy. You can also create different shaped holes in your snow to pour your syrup into. Put a popsicle stick in it and viola, you have yourself a maple syrup sucker! Click here for instructions.

Gingerbread Bath Bombs

There are so many fun and exciting activities that happen this time of the year as everyone is getting ready for Christmas. Why not use the power of science to make your Christmas experience extra special! In this activity, you will use some simple ingredients from your kitchen along with a few specialized ingredients to make your own Gingerbread Man homemade bath bombs! Using the power of science, you can combine both the acid and base ingredients to create a bath bomb that smells wonderful and also fizzes and bubbles when it reacts with water! These would be great to use as small gifts to give away to friends and family or to simply treat yourself! Check out the website and videos for the bath bomb recipe and instructions.

Making A Folded Egg

As Thanksgiving approaches, we are all beginning to think about our favorite foods that we will enjoy for Thanksgiving dinner. But did you know that cooking is all about science? For our next science experiment, we are going to keep with the Thanksgiving theme and use one of the traditional Thanksgiving foods in our experiment: eggs. In this really cool science experiment, you will create a folding egg that can then be reinflated again! Check out the video to see how to conduct the experiment. Next, click here for the instructions on the experiment from Steve Spangler Science. Maybe you can use this experiment to wow your guests at Thanksgiving!

Scientific Method

In this experiment, you will follow the steps of the scientific method to determine your reaction time. Does your reaction time increase or decrease with age? Check out the video for instruction on how to do the experiment. There is also an experiment guide included.

For a guide on this experiment, click Scientific Method Sense Lab.