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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.

In this activity, learners discover what happens when they crush wintergreen-flavored candies in a very dark room.

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

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

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

In this activity, learners use a flashlight, a glass of water, and some milk to examine why the sky is blue and sunsets are red.

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

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

Learners demonstrate how water can distort, refract and magnify light.

The major goal of this math lesson is to have learners collect data from a variety of experiments, determine what models best fits their data, and explain why their models are best.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Learners experiment with water gel crystals, or sodium polyacrylate crystals, which absorb hundreds of times their weight in water. When in pure water, the water gel crystals cannot be seen.

In this activity, learners observe color mixing and absorbency using colored tissue paper and spray bottles.

In this activity about the solar system, learners use various light sources to examine ice with different components to understand how NASA studies planets and moons from space.

In this activity, learners experiment and observe how the color of materials that cover the Earth affects the amounts of sunlight our planet absorbs.