Ask HN: Science for the very young? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Science for the very young?

12 pointstimwiseman10 comments

My son is just about to turn 5 and I am looking for "science experiments" or projects we can do together to help get him interested (and give me an excuse to do some of them).

Any suggestions, especially on a budget?

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I think anything that "looks cool" will be good for getting a kid interested in science. Once you've got him/her hooked, then you can start on the actual scientific method. To that end, science things that look cool:

Cymatics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iXY2BE1S8Q

Ferrofluid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBxCnHU8Ao http://www.gaussboys.com/ndfeb-magnets/FerroFluid25

Non Newtonian Liquids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5SGiwS5L6I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2XQ97XHjVw

Microcontrollers: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=211799... (maybe not the best for a 5 year old, but in a couple years)

Make a Speaker for cheap (haven't done this one myself): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m8fbnShPcw

Electromagnets: http://education.jlab.org/qa/electromagnet.html

Finally, one project I did with my little brother that I thought was cool. I got a frequency analyzer for my computer ( http://www.relisoft.com/Freeware/freq.html) and then filled glass cups with varying amounts of liquid. Then we ran our fingers around the lip of the glass to get it to "sing" and measured the frequency. We were able to come up with a function for X amount of liquid gives you X frequency. I thought this was great because: it was really appealing to my brother (he was 10 or so at the time) because all kids like making cups make noise, we got to do scientific method (hypothesis being more water in the glass) will make a lower frequency, I got to teach him about graphing, how to get a forumla for a line on a graph, and finally we could use that line to predict things to see if we were right.

You could have a lot of fun with an inexpensive microscope (look at a number of different materials, bugs, etc..) or even a set of magnifying glasses. Get your hands on some polarizers, play with the affect of one and your ability to look into bodies of water (pool, lake, etc) show him that if you cross the polarizers you can't see through. Couple the polarizers to the microscope and do some polarization microscopy. You could also play with prisms and look at the dispersion of light. Lots of good optics stuff out there. I would highly recommend staying away from lasers until he's older.

You might also consider doing some crystallization experiments (google "crystal projects for kids").

Throw some pepper on a bowl of water, and touch it with a soaped finger.

Also Baking Soda + Vinegar, add some red food coloring for lava effect

Great suggestion. First one we did. He loves it. If you add a drop of dish soap it gets more bubbly and looks more like lava.

Show him videos on youtube of various science experiments or lectures. When he seems interested in an idea, work with him to create an experiment, find the items, and perform it.

That photosensitive paper that lets you make 'photographs' of objects (like leaves and rocks) was pretty fun.

Get him one of those one-volume kids' science encyclopedias to carry around.

You'd have to build it, but how about model rockets?

Diet Coke + Mentos

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