In these activities, students will learn about mass, volume and density and their relationship to each other by conducting investigations in buoyancy—floating (and sinking) objects used in their everyday lives.

In these activities, students practice real-world application of scientific methods and gain an appreciation of the use of science in both the field and the laboratory to solve crime.

Weather is an important part of our lives and one that we cannot control. Instead, it often controls how and where we live, what we do, what we wear and what we eat.

In these activities, students explore meteorology by creating their own weather conditions and measurement tools in the classroom.

This activity is designed to get students thinking about what happens when air moves. Sometimes it is difficult to think about air and what it does because it is invisible. The air cannon is a way to 'see' air as it moves objects within its 'blast zone'.

Modern animals face many of the same survival challenges that dinosaurs did. In this memory matching game, students match a common characteristic shared by a dinosaur and a living animal.

Often our senses are overpowered by the sense we use the most often: sight. In this activity, students hone their sense of touch while silencing their sense of sight.

Students use changes of state to create chilly architecture.

Students learn about the compressability - or incompressability - of fluids and gases. 

In this demonstration, students will observe the patterns that occur when a mixture is made.

Students will sharpen their observations and interpretations of the environment around them. A sound map helps us become more aware of the sounds in our environment. It's a fun way to record observations and compare environments.

Observing uses one or more of the five senses to gather information about our surroundings. We're used to observing with our eyes. In this activity, students try observing with one of their other senses: smell!

Students will investigate a property of air – that it takes up space. The bottle is already full of air. In order for more air, or the ball, to move into the bottle, some air has to come out. The air coming out of the bottle pushes the ball with it.

Download everything you need to know about Planning a Night of Family Science Event in your community!

These engaging events are designed to create an environment for families to stimulate curiosity and explore the science all around them in an exciting, educational, community enriching activity.

Please share this resource with your community leaders, program coordinators, and Parents Advisory Council (PAC) members and modify in whatever way necessary to get more British Columbian's doing science!
Contents include event planning, managing volunteers, communication and evalution.

Events typically include:

• Science shows and/or demonstrations
• Make and Take activity stations
• Free door prize draw
• A building competition such a making paper airplanes for distance and accuracy.

Download Community-Wide Night of Family Science Toolkit (PDF)

SCIENCE WORLD'S SCIENCE FAIR GUIDE

Download everything you need to know about Science Fairs in our original, comprehensive guide!

The guide is divided into four sections, each with handouts that can be customized to suit your particular needs:

• Planning the Fair: From timelines to team building, this section outlines the steps for planning the event.
• Organizing the Students: Find explanations and support materials for students’ projects.
• During the Event: What happens on the day?—from interviewing to draw prizes.
• Evaluation: Includes a variety of assessment options, including how to prepare students for competitive fairs.

According to Natural Resources Canada, the average North American will produce 600 times their own weight in garbage over their lifetime. A 68kg person will leave behind a 40,825 trash legacy. By altering daily practices, such how an individual packs their lunch for school or work, a significant amount of waste can be prevented from entering the landfill. In this lesson, students identify the amount of waste they produce in their lunch and establish classroom goals for waste reduction.

Explore the water cycle as it occurs on your desk! Students will create a terrarium to model the water cycle.

Unlike garbage, recyclable materials can be broken down and rebuilt into new items like pillow stuffing, traffic cones or even the lining in ski jackets! Recycling or reusing items reduces the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. In this lesson, students will investigate the environmental importance of recycling and the impact of waste.

When we think of rainforests, broad-leafed plants and animals like monkeys, giant snakes, brightly-coloured frogs come to mind. We have a different type of rainforest in British Columbia—the coastal temperate rainforest.

These activities introduce the main animals and plants and the primary characteristics of our coastal temperate rainforest. 

How are rainbows made? What makes grass green and jeans blue? How do sunglasses work? In this series of demonstrations and activities, students will explore how colours are created and understood by our brain.

The Unusual Structural Strength of Eggs! In this resource, students will demonstrate several scientific principles by exploring characteristics of an egg’s material and shape that make it so versatile.

The strategies used by an animal to survive in its environment. Students will explore the special features of a number of different animals through a series of demonstrations and activities.

Every Drop Counts! This lesson investigates the water cycle, the process water takes to get to our homes and the importance of reducing water use to conserve it.

Sprinkle, Splash, Submerge, Soak! In these activities, students will discover cool ways that water interacts with various materials, all due to its special properties.

This lesson investigates the needs of these creatures and gives students the tools to become more aware of how they share an environment with city-dwelling animals. 

In this lesson, students will learn about the process of pollination, the animals that pollinate, and the strategies that they can use to promote pollinator health and wellbeing.

Decomposers play an important role in the circle of life—without them, waste would just pile up! These activities help students study decomposers, with particular relevance to recycling and sustainability.

Science isn’t always neat and tidy — it’s sometimes “GROSS!” Blood, vomit, brains, and pellets aren’t things you always want to talk about, but they provide valuable information about animals and how they live.

We can expand the way we think about the world by exploring the interesting world of animals and the so-called “gross” things about them. Explore why vomit is important, play a bloodsucker’s game and do some dissecting to learn more about how “gross” things are actually “cool”!

For some things, it’s not too hard to classify them as liquids, solids, or gases. But what about that gooey stuff that feels wet yet doesn’t pour? Or the sticky stuff you can stretch and stretch and it never breaks? In this lesson students get the chance to explore some strange materials. 

It is often said that seeing is believing, but can we really trust what our eyes are telling us? In this resource, students explore optical illusions and how our brain strives to make sense of the information it receives.

Have you ever been to a magic show and wondered how you could perform amazing tricks, too? Many of the most magical looking effects are made possible because of some basic principles of science. This lesson gives students the chance to investigate the science of magic … or, perhaps, the magic of science.

When water turns into snow, is it still water? The answer is yes!
Our world is filled with solids, liquids and gases and matter can go from one state of matter into another without changing its substance. In this lesson, students explore the different states of matter.

We may not realize it, but the air that surrounds us is exerting a huge amount of pressure on every square centimetre of our bodies. In these activities students explore the impressive force of air and learn how air pressure affects their daily lives. 

At this very moment, we have the equivalent weight of a car pushing down on our heads. Do you see anything? Although we can't always feel it with our senses, air is all around us, exerting large amounts of pressure on our bodies. In these activities, students apply the concepts of air pressure to demonstrate how air affects our daily lives.

Not just a lot of hot air! Most children have played with balloons, but few have thought about the chemical and physical concepts involved in balloon production and use. In the activities that follow, students explore balloon properties and their use in demonstrating various scientific concepts.

Electric current is the flow of electrons through a completed circuit of conductors. It is used to power everything from our lights to our trains. In these activities, students will explore different kinds of circuits and investigate what is required to make up a complete circuit.

Discovering a way for people to take flight is undoubtedly one of the most awe-inspiring feats of human ingenuity the world has known to date. Although the first airplane was invented over a century ago, watching planes lift off and land still seems like something that defies reality.

In order for an airplane to fly, engineers had to master the balance and control of four forces: lift, gravity, thrust, and drag, also known as the "four forces of flight." By adjusting these forces, pilots are able to speed up, slow down, lift off, and land.

This module is designed to demystify each of these forces and examine how they contribute to flight.

Hummingbirds are found throughout most of British Columbia. This small, warm-blooded group of birds has several unique adaptations and abilities that allow it to survive our cool climate. This lesson explores characteristics of hummingbirds and the steps we can take to make our environment more welcoming to hummingbirds.

Sound is all about vibrations. The source of the sound vibrates, bumping into the air molecules nearby, which in turn bump into their neighbours and so forth. This results in a wave of vibrations through the air to the eardrum, which in turn vibrates. What the sound wave will sound like when it reaches the ear depends on a number of things such as the medium it travels through and the strength of the initial vibration.

In the following activities, students will use simple supplies to create, visualize, and feel sound waves, investigate vibration and its role in producing sound, and make their own percussion instruments.

Have you ever rubbed a balloon on your head? Why does rubbing a balloon on your head make your hair stand up on end?

When you rub the balloon, electrons move from the atoms and molecules in your hair onto the balloon. Electrons have a negative charge, so the balloon becomes negatively charged and your hair is left with a positive charge. This "separation of charge" is the reason for the collection of effects we call static electricity.

Students will explore static electricity through a series of demonstrations and experiments.

While investigating the power of the sun, students will discuss methods of protecting themselves from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. They will explore solar thermal energy by examining a radiometer, playing with a solar UFO and creating solar ovens. They will use photovoltaic cells to power small motors.

A watershed is a section of land where all of the area’s water is collected and funnelled into the same waterway. Many human activities can negatively affect animals, particularly wild salmon, in their natural watershed habitat. The health of the watershed animal population depends on the health of their natural habitat. In this lesson, students will identify each stage of the salmon lifecycle and identify factors that affect salmon survival.