Kids, let"s watch the ways in which food coloring can move through different liquids. You"ll need 3 clear plastic cups, water, 4 teaspoons of salt, seltzer water, and food coloring. Please note: All chemicals and experiments can entail an element of risk, and no experiments should be performed wi...

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Kids, do you know what lubricants are? They help reduce friction, or wear and tear, between moving parts. They can be solids such as graphite, soap, or talcum or they can be liquids like oils and greases. An important feature of a liquid lubricant is its thickness or ability to flow. This quality is...

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Kids, here you will be introduced to the concept of density, which is one property used by chemists to help identify unknown substances. Please note: All chemicals and experiments can entail an element of risk, and no experiments should be performed without proper adult supervision. Let's first m...

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This column is for you real little ones - those of you who have just begun school and are learning your letters. You will learn the letter "D, d" with the basic scientific concept of dissolving something. Get a clear plastic cup, water, a pencil, a paper towel, a twist-tie, and a kool-aid packet. P...

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Kids, dinosaurs didn't write memoirs or take family photos. But scientists can dig up the real dirt about dinosaurs, thanks to fossils. The only proof scientists have of dinosaurs is their fossilized bones. Original bones are relatively soft and fragile things that cannot survive the test of time, e...

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Kids, there are all kinds of interesting things to think about when someone dips a teabag into a cup of hot water to make their hot tea. Inside a teabag are the crushed up dried leaves of the tea plant. Most of a tea leaf is cellulose, which is the major structural material of all plants. Cellulose ...

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Kids, sometimes it can be hard to figure out what someone means by a pure compound versus a mixture. Let's try to clear this up with an easy explanation and experiment. First, pure elements are what you see on the periodic table, and some materials exist naturally in their pure elemental form, like ...

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Kids, have you heard of Bill Nye, The Science Guy? He has a fast-paced television show that we can highly recommend. Here we are going to summarize the show on nutrition. Both this column and Bill Nye stress that not all chemicals are necessarily "bad", and quite often they are absolutely essential....

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Kids, have you ever built a sand castle at the beach? The sand "wets" easily with water to make a nice packing mud. Beach sand is mostly made of the mineral quartz (a form of silica, SiO2) that is broken into tiny pieces. In the jargon of chemistry, the surface of sand is said to be hydrophilic, or ...

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Wally had a secret thought That he just had to tell. Wendy sat four desks away - He did not want to yell. How did our Wally do it So no one else could see? To send a secret message, Some candle wax is key! Please note: All chemicals and experiments can entail an element of risk, and no experime...

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