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Bent Toward Science: Refraction
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This is an activity about the behavior of light. Using simple, everyday objects, learners will discover that light moves in straight lines until acted upon by another object.
Triboluminescence
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In this activity, learners discover what happens when they crush wintergreen-flavored candies in a very dark room.

Two Lenses in One
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In this activity about light, learners explore how water can refract light and change the way they see things.

Give and Take
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In this activity, learners explore liquid crystals, light and temperature. Using a postcard made of temperature-sensitive liquid crystal material, learners monitor temperature changes.

Convection Current
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In this activity, learners make their own heat waves in an aquarium.

Soap Bubble Shapes
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Learners explore three-dimensional geometric frames including cubes and tetrahedrons, as they create bubble wands with pipe cleaners and drinking straws.

Liquid Crystals Interact with Light!
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In this two-part activity, learners explore the properties of liquid crystals, which are responsible for why mood rings change color.

Water Illusions: Refraction & Magnification
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Learners demonstrate how water can distort, refract and magnify light.

Dirty Oil, Oily Dirt
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In this activity, learners discover how sediment is affected in an oil spill. Learners investigate the differences between heavy and light oil as well as the differences between different sediments.

Critical Angle
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In this optics activity, learners examine how a transparent material such as glass or water can actually reflect light better than any mirror.

Light as Air
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In this physics activity (page 6 of the PDF), learners will demonstrate air has weight by comparing an inflated balloon to a deflated one.

Changing Colors
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Learners experiment with a commercially available liquid-crystal coaster. They warm the material with their hands for varying lengths of time and observe the changing colors that result.

Bubble Suspension
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In this activity, learners observe as soap bubbles float on a cushion of carbon dioxide gas. Learners blow bubbles into an aquarium filled with a slab of dry ice.

Water Wire: Electricity Flowing Through Water
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In this activity on page 10 of the PDF, learners detect the amount of energy that can flow through a sodium chloride electrolyte solution with a light sensor.

Diet Light
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In this quick activity, learners observe how the added sugar in a can of soda affects its density and thus, its ability to float in water.

The Liquid Rainbow
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Learners are challenged to discover the relative densities of colored liquids to create a rainbow pattern in a test tube.

Exploring Earth: Investigating Clouds
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“Exploring Earth: Investigating Clouds” is a hands-on activity in which visitors create a cloud in a bottle and explore it with laser light.

Erupting Fizz
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This is a highly visual demonstration that illustrates both the effects of density and chemical reactions.

Turbidity
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This is an activity about turbidity, or the amount of sediment suspended in water.

Mini Glacier Meltdown
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This activity (located on page 3 of the PDF under GPS: Glaciers Activity) is a full inquiry investigation about the different causes of glacial melt.