Let's Experiment

Cover image of Let's Experiment, featuring intersecting circles of textured colour in yellow, red, blue and aqua on a white background

Paperback - March 2002 - AU $35.00

An invaluable resource of 43 hands-on experiments and four classroom demonstrations designed for students aged 8 and upwards.

Let’s Experiment is an invaluable resource of 43 hands-on experiments and four classroom demonstrations designed for students aged 8 and upwards. + Full description

The experiments are organised in six themes with at least six experiments in each topic area: Air & Water; Food; Energy; Colour; Materials; Forensic Science.

Teachers will gain confidence from the experiments and extensive support notes and the fact that each one can be completed with inexpensive, readily available materials.

Let’s Experiment will help develop sound scientific concepts with students learning to ask questions, make predictions, apply experimental techniques and observe and draw reasonable conclusions. The interesting and practical experiences will ignite the spark of curiosity in most students and will sow the seeds of a lifetime interest in science in many.

- Short description

Details

Paperback | March 2002 | $ 35.00
ISBN: 9780643068018 | 120 pages
Publisher: The Royal Australian Chemical Institute
Illustrations

Features

  • 47 experiments that work every time
  • Student pages designed to be photocopied as handouts
  • Low cost, readily available materials and equipment
  • Extensive teacher notes on materials, methods, scientific background and discussion points for every experiment

Contents


Foreword

Air and Water

  • Wet air
  • How much oxygen is in air?
  • A mini fire extinguisher
  • Making rain
  • Boat races
  • Creepy water
  • Cold snap
  • Water walks a tightrope
  • Tying water into knots
  • Fire food (teacher demonstration)

Food

  • Brown foods
  • Colourful celery
  • Milk swirls
  • Testing for starch
  • Growing sugar crystals
  • Growing white sugar
  • Dancing spaghetti

Energy

  • Going hot and cold
  • Cool light
  • Marble magic
  • Super sparker
  • Lemon battery
  • Insulators and conductors of heat

Colour

  • Colours — now you see them
  • Disappearing colours
  • Powerful colours
  • Acid and base colours
  • Invisible inks
  • Your own weather balloon
  • Separating colours
  • Red cabbage and dry ice (Teacher demonstration)

Materials

  • Non-Newtonian slime
  • Making plastic
  • Emulsions
  • Plastics
  • Two kinds of clean
  • Bubble, bubble
  • Lava lamp
  • Growing crystals of different shapes and colours (Teacher demonstration)
  • Growing crystal garden (Teacher demonstration)

Forensic Science

  • What’s that liquid?
  • What do fingerprints look like?
  • Taking fingerprints
  • Prints in the ground
  • Telltale shoes 1
  • Telltale shoes 2
  • A ransom note?

Index of Materials

Authors

Paul Savage is a program leader with CSIRO Molecular Science. He has spent two years as editor of Chemistry in Australia, and is committed to science education and to sharing his enthusiasm for the wonders of a science career.