FUN Science with Halloween Candy!

Check out our updated list of spooky science Halloween Activities here! 
Worried about having too much Halloween candy laying around? Here’s a little science you can do with your kids’ haul—or your own!

Chances are if you’ve got kids they’re going to want to go trick-or-treating. This means they’ll end up loaded with way more candy than you’d want them to actually eat. What could you do with the rest? Well, you could donate it, you could take it to a candy buyback program or you could do a little science with it! Here are a few ideas from Candyexperiments.com.

Lifesaver Lights
Here’s a simple one. Grab some wintergreen flavored Life Saver candies, stand in a dark room, face a mirror and chew them with your mouth open. You’ll see flashes of light that result from electrons in the candy; these are more easily visible thanks to the wintergreen flavoring.

 

 

Pop Rocks
Ever tried pouring some Pop Rocks into a glass of water? If you do, you’ll find that it’s a pretty effervescent experience.

 

 

 

Chocolate Bloom
By rapidly heating and cooling a piece of chocolate, you can gradually seperate it into its component parts. This results in white streaks and spirals called chocolate bloom. You can even still eat the chocolate once this is done—the texture might be a little unusual but it’s still perfectly edible!

 

Density Rainbow
Skittles are both delicious and colorful – here’s a way to really help that color shine. By using different quantities of various colored Skittles and the principle that sugar makes water more dense, you can create a liquid rainbow. This is one of the tougher experiments to try; make sure you pour the melted Skittles very slowly otherwise the different colors will just mix together.

 

Color Separation- Chromotography
Even if a piece of candy is only one color, that color can actually contain a variety of differently colored dyes. By dissolving candy coloring into water then slowly dripping that water down a piece of paper, it’s possible to see all those various colors. This is an easy experiment and the results are striking. Try it with brown M&Ms!

Summer Science FUN at The Lab

Long summer days are full of fun with baseball games to bike rides to hours spent doing nothing but daydreaming. But summer vacation is also the perfect time to keep your child’s brain buzzing with hands-on science experiments, from hunting hurricanes and counting constellations with weather and astrology to classifying geodes and befriending beetles with geology and entomology. You may think that combining science with summer vacation sounds like a parental pipe dream, but with all the time for child-directed learning and hands-on experimentation, summer is a kid scientist’s dream come true!

One such place to explore the many wonders of science during the summer is The Lab in Wellington, Florida where High Touch High Tech of South Florida hosts week long camps all summer! Camps are geared toward children ages 4-12 years old and can be modified to accommodate children with special needs. From erupting volcanoes to exploring the rainforest, campers are kept engaged and interacting all day long.

To read more about summer camp at The Lab, check out this AWESOME article recently published by the Sun Sentinal:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/wellington/fl-wf-sciencecamp-0713-20110713,0,7014455.story

To learn more about High Touch High Tech and The Lab, visit www.ScienceMadeFunSFL.net.

High Touch High Tech Launches New KIDS Website

High Touch High Tech is pleased to announce the launch of our new website

 www.ScienceMadeFunKids.net

Designed with kids in mind, this website is colorful, FUN and interactive. Children will enjoy the animated characters and sound effects while answering science trivia questions, giggling at science jokes and rolling up their sleeves to complete science experiments in their very own home!

We are excited to offer this new resource to teachers, camp directors, pre-school directors, afterschool coordinators and  parents as a safe place for children to visit online that provides both entertainment and education.

High Touch High Tech science education franchises have been fueling the imaginations of children everywhere, since 1994, by providing FUN, interactive, hands-on science and nature experiences. Through discovery style learning and inquiry based dialogue, children are engaged in exciting programs that encourage them to explore the many wonders of science. High Touch High Tech serves over 4 million participants annually across more than 750 school districts in 5 countries. For more information about Hight Touch High Tech – Science Made Fun, visit our website at www.ScienceMadeFun.net.

Science In Nature

Nature Center BoothThis past weekend, we participated in the Festival of Knowledge at the Western North Carolina Nature Center where children had their science fair projects on display. Our exhibit offered visitors and participants the opportunity to make one of our signature experiments, “space mud”! High Touch High Tech even gave out prizes to the winning science fair projects. Their programming really stimulates the imagination and curiosity of children. It truly was a wonderful day in which both science and nature were celebrated!