Science experiments for your home laboratory

If you want to make a fluffy bun, you will need baking powder. But why? And how does the baking powder actually work? And which one is the best? Try it out in this experiment!

Sparklers are such a small firework for Christmas time that pleases not only a child, but also many adults. But how and why do they actually work? Why do they actually "pop"? You will find out in this experiment.

Create your own "homemade" fire extinguisher and try to improve it as much as possible! Find what to extinguish with and how you can influence its function, taking into account the principles of reaction kinetics.

There must be a lot of toxic substances in those strange drinks. For example the weird blue color! It is not really natural. And probably, there is enough of it in the drink you get poisoned! Or not? Determine the dye content in the drink! Don't have a spectrometer? Never mind!

Do you know which drink is the best in the world? If not, just measure the pH of a few of your favorite beverages and you'll be wiser! And do you know how much a NaOH oven weighs? Do you not have a sensitive enough scale? Try to guess and then determine using a syringe and vinegar. Did you hit it off?

Although we are mainly made of water, we also owe the fact that we are alive to substances that can trigger the right chemical reaction at the right moment. We call these substances enzymes. Explore them more closely!

What is the difference among the distilled, tap and mineral water? And apart from the taste, is there any difference between the sugar solution and the salt solution? Try exploring this with a DIY conductivity sensor. It costs next to nothing!

You would be hard-pressed to find something more useful than cabbage. It fills you up, just like sailors used to on long voyages, and supplies you with plenty of antioxidants and vitamin C, so your blood vessels and teeth are safe. And it's great for chemistry experiments. Will you try it?

Forgot to buy glue? It doesn't matter if you have milk at home. And you will learn a lot of new things, because both the preparation and its use, that's a lot of great amazing chemistry!

Have you ever heard of celiac disease? If so, you know it's a gluten intolerance disorder. Gluten is a chemical compound that plays an important role in baking. In this experiment, you will isolate gluten from wheat flour and take a closer look at it.

You may know that a person does not produce saliva primarily to be able to spit (which is often considered impolite, after all), but mainly to digest better. Saliva contains many irreplaceable enzymes that help with digestion. Explore them more closely!

Did you know that the global annual cost of the "fight" against corrosion is estimated at 2.5 trillion dollars, which represents about 4% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of all industrialized countries in the world? That's a decent amount, isn't it? In order to save money, it is worth getting to know corrosion more closely and understand how we can influence it!

The law of conservation of matter is one of the most important laws of chemistry and science in general. The French scientist Antoine Lavoisier is considered to be its discoverer. Follow in his footsteps and try to check if he was wrong in his discovery!

You may or may not know this, but delicious fluffy homemade bread, rolls or cake are the products of variety of chemical reactions and events. During fermentation, the yeast breaks down the sugars in the flour and releases carbon dioxide. In this experiment, you will investigate how temperature affects the metabolism of yeast, and thus their function.

We can imagine the feet as the foundations of a house. If they are not OK, the rest of the house cannot be OK as well. One of the problems that can be manifested by foot pain is the so-called "flat feet". Explore the degree of flatness of the foot in this activity!

The market offers many of sun creams of different compositions and protective factors. But isn't this just an advertising trick? Do the sun creams really reliably protect us from dangerous UV radiation? Explore it using luminescence in this activity!

Well, we all know that plants need light to grow. But do we also know what light? Is it a UV radiation, which is more penetrating, sufficient? And will be plant growth dependent on a light intensity? And if so, is there a ceiling to this intensity? You can try all of this in this activity!

Air pollution affects everyone and everywhere in the world. According to the World Health Organization, nine out of ten citizens around the world breathe poor quality air and 7 million people die from air pollution every year. As part of this activity, contribute to the monitoring of the air in your surroundings, without demanding equipment and devices.

Most of the people on the planet have limited access to quality water, sources are often polluted. It is therefore necessary to monitor water sources and, if necessary, to clean the water. In this activity, you will learn about ways of monitoring water quality and its treatment through various experiments that can be carried out at home with household materials and tools.

There are dozens of different elements, especially metals, in our mobile phones. Why are there so many? Especially thanks to the unique properties of some of them. In this activity, you will identify some elements by examining their properties and try to explain the reason for their use in smartphone. You will also deal with the question of whether these are so-called "endangered" elements and what potential problems are associated with them.

Food is often wasted in developed countries, even though people are hungry in other countries on the planet. Many foods then end up unused in landfills and incinerators. This activity provides an opportunity to rethink how we treat food waste and challenges us to explore so-called biomaterials. We will try to transform food waste into new biomaterials and give them a second life.

Food is often wasted in developed countries, even though people are hungry in other countries on the planet. Many foods then end up unused in landfills and incinerators. The way to solve this problem could be the recycling of discarded food. In this activity, you will try to make bioplastics, both from products of plant origin, such as potato starch, and of animal origin, such as gelatin. And you will discover that there is a lot of chemistry involved!

Are you not satisfied with your current sun cream? Is the protection factor too low? In this activity, you can prepare a better cream that suits you more. You will find out what chemical substances you need for this, what their function is in the sun cream and how chemistry allows us to mix substances that, at first glance, are completely immiscible. Finally, you will test your cream using chlorophyll extract.

Because life is, among other things, based on water and aqueous solutions, the pH value is a very important value for controlling water quality. For a quick indicative pH measurement, just use the pH test paper. But for more accurate measurements, it will be better to use a pH meter. With this activity, build your own pH meter based on Arduino and try to save the endemic Catalan river fish, the Mediterranean mullet!

One of the important properties of water quality is turbidity. It can be consequence of the presence of larger solid particles, but also of living organisms such as algae and cyanobacteria. Turbidity can thus point to the presence of bacteria, in natural waters the presence of these particles causes a lower permeability for light, thus making it difficult for example for the growth of underwater plants. Measure the turbidity of various water sources in your area at home and classify them!

During the covid-19 pandemic, disinfection was an important way of combating the spread of this disease. Prepare this disinfectant solution that has helped millions of people not get sick and find out what its ingredients are and what their function is!

You may know, some companies add starch, potatoes or flour to some meat products, such as ham and sausages, for more profit. Try to find out if you have any such foods at home!

You may have noticed an interface between two different colored water surfaces while swimming in the sea. Do you think that these waters differ only in color? In this activity, prepare two aqueous solutions that do not mix, and think about whether we can relate the experiment to the availability of fresh water on Earth!

You know well that some chemical reactions take place rapidly, while others take place really slowly. Sometimes, it would be useful for some reactions to take place more slowly and others to take place more quickly. Explore how the the reaction rate can be influenced and how to speed up or slow down specific reactions as needed!

A considerable number of kinds of plastic can be found around us. The specific type of plastic can be identified from the triangular symbol with a number that indicates the type of plastic from which the object is made. However, sometimes, we cannot find this label on the product, or it is illegible. Fortunately, there is a way to find out what plastic it is!

Electrolysis of water is a fundamental process for the production of so-called pure "green" hydrogen, which can subsequently be used as a fuel and the main substance for the production of a number of chemical compounds, for example ammonia. But it is not enough to just put the electrodes in water and wait for hydrogen. The whole process is a bit more complicated! Explore it in this activity!

Nowadays, batteries are all around us. The first battery was invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800, and thanks to the electricity from it, he managed to achieve contractions of the frog's legs. Because of this, some scientists initially believed that the origin of electricity was exclusively of animal origin. In this activity, you will proceed very much like Volta! You build your own battery and measure its electromotive voltage in various connections, unfortunately, without using frog legs.

Do you believe that it is possible to light up an LED without connection it to a battery with wires? Try your hand at using electro-chemistry in this activity! This isn't magic, it's electrochemistry!

When the metals are extracted from the mine or when they are recycled, they need to be cleaned. This also applies, for example, to electronic waste from computers. A large amount of chemical solvents, e.g. concentrated acids, can be used for this purpose. Or we can go smarter and dissolve the metal by oxidizing it when it is connected to the anode. Try it out in this activity!

When you go hiking in the mountains, you will need a lot of energy, which the body will produce by oxidizing the food you take with you. Cashew nuts, for example, are very tasty. But if you take a whole bag of them, will it be enough for such a long march? In this activity, try to determine how much energy is hidden in one cashew nut!