Rainbows peeping between two baubles of clouds, bright, wild flowers adding a splash of colors to the backyard, slushy strawberry sauces dripping from tall glasses of vanilla ice cream – that pretty much sums up summers! It’s the ideal time to set up science work stations outdoors and experiment with the wonders of summers! Carry out these fun science experiments and amidst the warmth of summer, in your backyard, garden, community park, or elsewhere!
Image Source – https://www.flickr.com/photos/stevensnodgrass/6807424348/
Homemade water sprinkler
Summers are synonymous with cool drinks but it’s not very cool to dispose off the plastics in which the drinks come, so we’ve devised this fun science experiment with the not-so-cool plastic bottles.
You will need:
- A plastic soda bottle
- Pins
- Water
Directions
- Head out, it’s summer.
- Fill the plastic bottle with water and screw on the cap.
- Using a pin, make 5 evenly spaced holes on the side of the bottle, towards the bottom.
- Run your finger along the streams of water that are gushing from the bottle.
- Do you notice the five streams forming one wider stream? What forms when you run your fingers through the stream of water is called cohesion. The water molecules get stuck to each other and form one single stream while oozing out from the bottle.
DIY rock candy
How about spending the idle summer holidays doing something that you would not just like to see but eat too! Head out to make a rock candy because it may get messy indoors!
You will need:
- Cane sugar
- Drinking water
- Mason jar
- Pencil string
Directions
- Fill the mason jar with water.
- Add 3 cups of cane sugar to the water and stir well.
- Place the sugar solution in the microwave and heat on high for two minutes.
- Use oven gloves to remove the mason jar from the microwave and stir another time.
- Place it back in the microwave and heat for another two minutes. Remove again and stir.
- Tie a length of string to a chopstick and gently dip it into the mixture. Pull out the string gently again and allow it to dry.
- Once dry, dip the string again into the mixture and then allow it a week’s time to dry.
- Your rock candy will be ready in a week’s time!
- You created a super saturated solution when you heated the water-sugar solution in the microwave. When you dipped a string into the solution, the sugar granules crystallized and formed a rock candy!
DIY vanilla ice cream
What’s summer without a scoop of our favorite vanilla ice cream? Make ice cream while you’re out running after the butterflies in your backyard and enjoying the summer!
You will need:
- Two sandwich bags, one bigger than the other
- A cup of full cream
- Half a cup of milk
- A teaspoon of vanilla essence
- One fourth a cup of sugar
- 3 cups full of ice cubes
- 3 cups salt
Directions
- Mix the cream, milk, vanilla essence, and sugar in the smaller sandwich bag. Seal it well.
- Slip in the smaller bag into the larger and fill up the larger sandwich bag with the ice cubes and salt.
- Seal the larger bag (with the smaller bag intact) and head out to enjoy the summers. Just make sure you keep shaking the bags for a good five minutes.
- Come back in and carefully take out the small bag from the large one and pour its contents in a bowl.
- Don’t you have a bowl gooey vanilla ice cream in front of you!
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