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CD Spinner
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In this activity, learners create a simple “top” from a CD, marble and bottle cap, and use it as a spinning platform for a variety of illusion-generating patterns.

Fan Cart
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If a sailboat is stranded because there is no wind, is it possible to set up a fan on deck and blow wind into the sail to make the boat move?

Bicycle-Wheel Gyro
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In this activity, a spinning bicycle wheel resists efforts to tilt it and point the axle in a new direction.

Bubble Tray
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In this activity, learners use simple materials to create giant bubbles.

Descartes' Diver
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In this activity, learners explore how changes in fluid pressure affect the buoyancy of a Cartesian diver inside a plastic soda bottle.

Illuminations on Rates of Reactions
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In this activity, learners investigate the speed of chemical reactions with light sticks. Learners discover that reactions can be sped up or slowed down due to temperature changes.

Over the Hill
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In this physics activity, learners construct a small-scale version of a classic carnival game.

Evolution in Plane Sight
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In this activity, learners model directed evolution by making paper fly. Learners construct and fly paper airplanes.

Pendulum Snake
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In this physics activity, learners assemble and/or investigate a pendulum "snake." Several large steel hex-nuts are suspended on strings of successively increasing length to form a series of pendulums

CD Air Puck
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In this activity, learners will use a compact disc to build an air puck that can glide across a smooth tabletop. The puck glides with almost no friction on a cushion of air escaping from a balloon.

Drawing Board
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The Drawing Board consists of a marking pen that remains stationary and a platform that swings beneath the pen, acting as a pendulum.

Rutherford Roller
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In this activity, learners make a black box device that serves as an excellent analogy to Rutherford's famous experiment in which he deduced the existence of the atomic nucleus.

Paper Airplanes
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In this activity, learners explore the properties of paper by constructing and modifying paper airplanes.

Vortex
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In this activity, learners create a tornado in a bottle to observe a spiraling, funnel-shaped vortex. A simple connector device allows water to drain from a 2-liter bottle into a second bottle.

Simple Spinner
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In this activity, learners create a tiny electric, motorized dancer. Learners use the interactions of magnetism and electric current to make a wire spin, while displaying the Lorentz Force in action.

Paper Tape Motion Timer
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In this activity, learners build a recording timer made from simple materials (e.g., small dc motor, sharpie pen, craft sticks, adding machine paper tape, etc.).

Marshmallow Puff Tube
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In this demonstration/activity, learners observe as a regular size marshmallow is blown through a tube made from a manila file folder.

Springs and Stomachs
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In this demonstration, learners investigate mass, gravity, and acceleration by dropping a wooden bar with a balloon attached to its underside, a mass suspended from it by rubber bands, and a sharp-poi

Make a Salt Volcano (Lava Lite)
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This activity about density provides instructions for making a miniature "lava lite" with just salt, oil, water, and food coloring.

Wilberforce Pendulum
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In this activity, learners build a Wilberforce Pendulum, a special coupled pendulum in which energy is transferred between two modes of vibration, longitudinal ("bounce') and torsional ("twist"), on a