Make a simple mini-motor. A coil of wire becomes an electromagnet when current passes through it. The electromagnet interacts with a permanent magnet, causing the coil to spin. Voilà! You’ve created ...

The distribution of the mass of an object determines the position of its center of gravity, its angular momentum, and your ability to balance it. Place a lump of clay about the size of your fist ...

The pneumatic tire and the chain drive, followed by the development of gears, revolutionized bicycling in the later 1800s. In the last fifteen years, there has been a revolution of sorts in the ...

Create your own personal sound system with a coat hanger and string. Create your own personal sound system with a coat hanger and a string, producing musical sounds that only you can hear Cut two ...

You’ve probably seen an ice skater spinning on the tip of one skate suddenly start to spin dramatically faster. A diver or gymnast may also suddenly flip or twist much faster. This speeded-up rotation ...

See yourself as others see you in this cylindrical mirror. A flat mirror will always reflect an image that's right side up and reversed right to left. A cylindrical mirror can produce images that are ...

Polarized light passing through sugar water reveals beautiful colors. White light is made up of all the colors in the rainbow. When polarized white light passes through a sugar solution, each color’s ...

Make a truth teller for light. Turn an old CD into a spectroscope to analyze light—you may be surprised by what you see. Try pointing your CD spectroscope at the fluorescent light in your room, sunlit ...

Gelatin can do much more than just wiggle and jiggle. Gelatin can be used for much more than a sweet treat. It can also act as a smoked lens—which allows you to view total internal reflection—or as a ...

Gravity doesn’t care if you trip. Density columns have many layers of liquids that sit on top of each other, but if you accidentally mix them up, most will settle into just two layers. You can shake ...

With polarized light, you can make a stained glass window without glass. Using transparent tape and polarizing material, you can make and project beautifully colored patterns reminiscent of abstract ...

Tired of having unpopped kernels at the bottom of your pot of popcorn? Just take a minute to make sure everything’s heated. Choose a pot large enough to hold the desired amount of popped popcorn.