Invisible Light Materials Required: A flashlight A small cardboard box A pair of scissors Talcum powder A dark room An adult While some types of energy can be seen, others remain invisible. Paradoxically, a beam of light energy is also considered to be invisible. This type of energy can only be seen, when light energy falls on the human eyes, or gets reflected on some object and then enters the eye....

How to Calculate Averages Materials Required: A jug of water Glasses, cups, bowls etc. of different sizes Newspapers Some white paper Red and blue marking pens Take containers and glasses of different shapes and fill them with water. Pour all the water from each container into a measuring jug. Measure the water in the jug and divide the total quantity by the number of containers. This is how the average amount...

Blinded By Light Materials Required: An automobile An adult A white poster board A black marker A dark evening While there is common knowledge of air pollution, astronomers will also inform you about something known as ‘Light pollution’. This occurs, when light from signs, lamp posts, neon lights, homes and offices, wash out the night sky, thereby hiding fainter stars from our view. This experiment basically deals with washing out your...

Finding the Direction of Sound Materials Required: Seven friends Fourteen pencils A blindfold A large bowl Safety scissors Paper We have five senses to learn about our environment. Our ears are the wonderful organs that enable us to hear sounds. Since our ears are placed, one on either side of the head (instead of both on the same side), our brain can figure out from the signals, as to where a...

Double Shadows Materials Required: Pencil Some sheet to type on A book A ruler Some clay Two flashlights The diameter is generally defined as the measure of a width, from one side to the other. Though the sun is located at a gargantuan distance from the earth, its size is so huge, that it can send a wide path of sunlight, from both sides of its diameter. It even seems to...

Deforming Ovals Materials Required: Proximity to a photocopying machine Some paper Myriad optical illusions are created when figures are drawn on a disk and rotated slowly. Here is how you can try it. Use a photocopying machine to copy the square shown in the illustration, with the three nested ovals. Cut the square out and crease it along both diagonals (dotted lines) to form two “valley” creases (that is creases that...

Converging Light Materials Required: A cardboard box of 60 cm to 90 cm high Two flashlights A clear evening, at dusk Galileo’s discovery of the telescope in 1609 was a huge development in the science of Astronomy. This allowed people to see hitherto unseen things in the sky at night. What we see at night with the naked eye, are not merely shining points of light, burning with different intensities, but...

Changing Colours  Materials Required: Crayons Five paper plates Five sticks A cloudless dark evening Adhesive tape It becomes hard to see, as the sun goes down. We will find out if it becomes more difficult to spot colours, as the sun goes down. Draw two crossed lines on a paper plate, thereby dividing the plate into 4 equal parts.  With a red crayon, colour two opposite sections, leaving the other two...