Experiments for Science Fair

Alice Waters and The Green Kitchen So what, yes I admit it I am drawn to all things Alice Waters. So sautee me. A new discovery was made today while walking through my local bookstore. I found a sweet looking cookbook with Alice on the cover. Naturally I stopped. The item of ...more

As some of you Mad Science readers will remember, we recently covered the separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. Passing a current through water can rend it apart, but we can also recombine that oxygen and hydrogen to make electricity! This is the pri ...more

Nikola Tesla In my opinion, one of the most neglected inventors of all time. The names Edison and Marconi come to mind as familiar, but Tesla? Most think of a car. Few know that Tesla is responsible for alternating current, florescent lights, radar, remote control, generators ...more

Sodium (chemical symbol Na) is an interesting element. It reacts in contact with both oxygen and water, and several sodium salts are used to produce a yellow color in fireworks. The metallic form has limited uses in chemistry, and is too soft and reactive to be used as a buil ...more

Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills. Submit your best shot to our weekly competition for a chance to win an awes ...more

In 2007, Nintendo introduced the world to motion control video games with the Wii. Microsoft and Sony built on Nintendo's phenomenal success and released their own motion control products for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 late in 2010: the Kinect and the Move. The Move is bas ...more

Texas based artist Shawn Smith brings the digital world to reality with his woodcut pixelated sculptures. The combination of a traditional material (wood) with a contemporary concept results in surprisingly fresh work. Plus, the craftsmanship appears to be impeccable. Check ou ...more

Science-fiction writer Jules Verne predicted many scientific breakthroughs, including the moon landing, tasers, and nuclear submarines. In his 1874 book The Mysterious Island, Verne writes: I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which ...more

Everyone dreams of having super powers. Flying, invisibility, and x-ray vision are popular, but my favorite is fire power! I've always wanted to be Wheeler from the Captain Planet kids show, and now I can with these handheld fireballs of awesomeness. The fireballs burn at a lo ...more

Jet engines combine oxygen from the surrounding air with on-board fuel to burn at very high temperatures and create thrust in the direction of the flame. Rockets, which we will learn about in a later post, are similar but carry oxygen internally and can therefore function in s ...more

The United States is a hierarchical country where the weak ones are at the bottom and the powerful ones are at the top. Garment workers are at the bottom of the list although they are the most important. Without them there would be no fashion industry. They sew and cut the gar ...more

Artist Austin Houldsworth of the UK has come up with a device that drastically speeds up the process of fossilisation. Entitled Two Million & 1AD, Houldsworth is capable of creating a fossil in a few months (which otherwise might require thousands of years). Houldsworth is cur ...more

The United Kingdom has long been known as an international hub of yellow tabloid journalism. The News Of The World, one of the nation's largest tabloids, is famously in court right now because of the deplorable methods it used to acquire salacious information about interesting ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

If you've ever had teeth removed/minor surgery, you most likely received some laughing gas, or nitrous oxide. This gas creates a happy, lightened feeling, and causes instant laughter. In this article, I'll show you how to make some. BUT BE CAREFUL!!! DO NOT proceed in this exp ...more

Jezebel's back with another Beauty 101 (1, 2, 3), and this time the issue at hand is body odor. Everybody gets a little stinky from time to time (some more than others), but have no fear- there are solutions. Jezebel readers also address problems such as pit stains, excessive ...more

INTRODUCTION In this world of Internet era, almost everyone wants to create theirs own web presence by either hosting their own blog, articles, photos, videos, reviews, etc etc . But some people choose their own way and decide to have something bigger! What is it? Its a websi ...more

A fire snake, also referred to as a black snake or sugar snake, is a classic science experiment you can do right in your own kitchen using a baking soda and sugar mixture and a fuel to ignite the reaction. When the baking soda gets hot, it makes carbon dioxide gas. The pressu ...more

Invented by Philadelphia tinsmith John L. Manson in 1858 for canning and preserving perishables, mason jars are experiencing a major resurgence in the DIY community. In addition to being a handy storage device for both food and non-food items, its old-timey, quaintly antiquate ...more

Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed that "the seed of science" was "wonder," and taking a look at this nine-layer liquid tower from Steve Spangler's Sick Science! channel, one can't help but do just that — wonder. How is this possible? Is this magic or what? While it's not exac ...more

Want to make boring old colorless water brighten up on command? Well, you can control the color of water with this little magic trick. Actually, it's not really magic, but a classic science experiment known commonly as the iodine clock reaction, which uses the reactions betwee ...more

Pyro or not, fireballs are intrinsically cool. Add in the handheld element and they're suddenly magical orbs. The invention is science experiment safe, but just because you can touch it doesn't mean it's not real fire. Be careful! Photo by Mr. 7 Make fireballs you can hold ...more

What would it be like to have clothing that killed microbes? Or paper that repelled pathogens? A research team from Rutgers University has developed a prototype out of metalized paper to zap the bad guys without being super expensive. Sound good? Read on. In a study published ...more

Nikola Tesla is one of the most tragic figures in the history of science, a history that is practically filled to the brim with tragic figures. Francis Bacon, a 16th century philosopher and scientist, caught pneumonia and died because he was trying to stuff snow into a dead ch ...more

We've all seen the classic tornado-in-a-bottle science experiment, which uses 2 two-liter bottles to create a whirlpool effect. This version requires you to get the tornado started yourself by spinning the bottles, but what if you want to make it fully automated? Instructable ...more

Responding to the emergence of Zika in the US, researchers investigated what type of repellent works best to reduce your odds of a mosquito bite from Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species that spreads the Zika virus. Scientists from the Department of Biology at New Mexico State ...more

If you're tired of using the same old ornaments on your Christmas tree year after year, then it's time to experiment with borax snowflakes. It's not only a fun decoration to make, it's a great science project to try out with family and friends. All you need for to make DIY cry ...more

In this video, I will show you how to make copper glow red hot with the catalytic oxidation of acetone. For this science experiment, we'll just need some acetone, copper wire, and a flame source to initially heat the copper coil we'll make. Video: . Materials Needed Pure acet ...more

This science experiment deals with sublimation of dry ice into carbon dioxide (CO2) gas. In the video, I'll demonstrate how pushing a quarter into a block of dry ice makes the quarter scream and shake vigorously. Video: . To do this trick, you'll just need a block of dry ice a ...more

Defy logic and gravity with this quick magic-science illusion. All you need is lighter fluid, a bowl and some bubble solution. The butane gas from the lighter sinks to the bottom of the bowl, below the oxygen. The bubbles then float in the oxygen atop the heavy butane creatin ...more

Why? Tricks the eye into thinking the impossible is as simple a single chemical reaction. Categorizing this tutorial is one of the great challenges for an internet librarian: magic trick or science experiment? Our crew made our own hot ice lab, which in effect ruined the ki ...more

How can something so common as milk turn instantly into a hard ball? Alginate. This critical ingredient is in everything from casts to Tums to silk screening gear. It is also the magic powder dropped into this kitchen sink science experiment. So, what is alginate? Sodium al ...more

London-based developer Andrew Hart has been working on AR navigation since Apple's original ARKit tool was still in beta preview. Now, he's ready to unleash his technology on the world. On Thursday, his startup, Dent Reality, released a new software development kit (SDK) that ...more

In a video released Tuesday, Microsoft arguably began to position the HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality as the future of education. A smart tactic meant to coincide with their other education-related announcements made on the same day. In an effort to take back the classroom ...more

The connection between self-control and glucose is not unique to humans. A bunch of trained dogs were divided into two groups. One group was instructed to sit and stay for 10 minutes. Dogs in the other group could run around and do whatever they wanted. Then all the dogs wer ...more

Gather all Mad Scientists. Science doesn't have to be all about hitting the books and memorizing formulas. Sometimes it's closer to Frankenstein or Dr.Jekyll than you can imagine. It's time to turn tomatoes into glow in the dark orbs. Video producers ShootingEggs did not incl ...more

Impossible, right? Ahh, well science says fire and ice can and do coexist. The Science of this experiment:Dry ice at -109ºF, is frozen carbon dioxide (CO2), not water (H2O). Dry ice is also much colder than a freezer ice cube. To be exact it is almost as cold as Earth's cold ...more

White rice is cheap, filling, and tasty. No wonder so many countries in the world rely on it as a mealtime staple, including most of East and Southeast Asia. Alas, because of its relative lack of nutrition and its high calorie count, consuming lots of white rice regularly also ...more

A dead British science nerd figured out the best way to cut a cake to preserve maximum freshness, and it's pure genius (well, sorta). His name? Sir Francis Galton, a polymath infamously known as the founder of eugenics, and apparently owner of a very big sweet tooth. Essentia ...more

What Is Graphene? Graphene is a very thin layer of graphite. Graphite is made out of carbon (the mother of all elements), and is normally used in pencils. Graphite is also used for brake padding in larger vehicles, the batteries in laptops or portable gaming systems, and in t ...more

Does TikTok scare you? Trust me, I get it. It's a strange, unfamiliar place to those of us not accustomed to its ways, populated by teenagers and college students with their own subcultures, memes, and humor. But here's the thing: TikTok has something for everyone, you include ...more

A lot of my hacks use salvaged parts from an old microwave, with the microwave oven transformer (MOT) being the most useful component. In this "Quick Clip," I'll be using a MOT again (a dual MOT stack) to make deadly flame-looking electricity jumping around midair. This scien ...more

We all know that DNA is pretty amazing, but it's not something that most of us get much hands-on experience with. Even though it's in every living thing around us, we never see it, so we rarely think about it either. A strawberry is one of the easiest things to extract DNA fr ...more

Michael Faraday was awesome. He discovered electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis, and he invented the Bunsen burner (before it was the Bunsen burner). Because of his work, we can make suits that can withstand 1,000,000 volts of electricity and cases to prote ...more

You can buy special utensils to do just about anything these days, and separating eggs is no exception. If you don't have (or want to buy) a fancy tool to do it, the classic method is simple—just crack the egg and transfer the yolk back and forth between the two halves. But ev ...more

Believe it or not, it's possible to make your very own lava—if you have a furnace capable of heating up to 1,200 degrees Celsius, that is. Bob Wysocki and Jeff Karson started the Syracuse University Lava Project to study basaltic lava and give students a hands-on way (hypothet ...more