You don't have to be a tightrope walker to do balancing tricks, but you do have to understand the role of an object's centre of gravity. In the following activities, students explore the conditions necessary for balance in order to keep objects from toppling over and how we use these concepts in 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.

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.

Bubbles fascinate both children and adults. Such simple ingredients—soap and water—create such beautiful shapes and colours. By experimenting with bubbles, students learn about surface tension, elasticity, minimal surface structures, and how to blow really, really big bubbles.

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)

Kick-start your students' creativity by asking them to brainstorm and problem-solve. In this two-part exploration, students are challenged to think about materials and solutions in a variety of ways.

An earthquake is a sudden, rapid shaking of the Earth caused by the release of energy stored in the Earth’s crust. “Earthquake” means any seismic event, whether natural (rubbing of tectonic plates) or induced by humans. In this program, we will explore how this happens and some of the effects of earthquakes by making models, building seismographs, and acting out tectonic movement in a game.

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.

Ever wonder why a rubber ball bounces or what makes a wind-up toy go? It’s all about the storage of energy! In this unit, students will play, measure, predict, and build their way through a variety of activities that demonstrate how potential energy can be stored and converted into kinetic energy. 

Just what does it take to fly to the moon... and beyond? Take a trip into space with this package of out-of-this-world activities. Train like an astronaut, simulate space missions, build and test space technology and discover what life in microgravity is like. Do you have what it takes to explore space?

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.

What happens when a bat hits a baseball? Why does a rolling ball eventually stop? How do we walk, jump or run? The answer lies in physics! In this topic, students get the chance to explore how Newton’s Laws of Motion explain the way that things move.

You won’t have to force your students to learn — they’ll push, pull, drop, roll, and fling their way through a variety of demonstrations and activities illustrating the forces on everything around us.

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. 

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.

Use some rather unique building materials to design and build a structure which is strong enough to support a book. Then try out different base shapes and see what happens!

These activities will get students looking more closely at plants by identifying plant parts, learning about how plants grow and reproduce, designing their own seeds, and even growing their own plants.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Shapes like squares, rectangles, and triangles are chosen to give strength and flexibility to furniture, buildings, even playground equipment and jewelry!

In this activity, students find shapes in their own environment.

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.

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.

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.

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