Why are you able to jump higher from a trampoline than from the ground? What forces are at work when you do an ollie on a skateboard?
The answer is: physics! In The Physics of Fun, kids ages 12 to 15 explore the science behind awesome activities that kids love. From Newton’s laws of motion to the behavior of electrons, the science of physics is an integral part of any amusement park, play center, video arcade, or home gaming center.
Links to online media, discussion questions, and career connections offer middle schoolers the chance to do some real, hands-on science around fun activities they already enjoy!
Try these STEM activities!
• Use a skateboard to demonstrate inertia
• Investigate the transfer and conservation of energy on a trampoline
• Build a guitar to explore sound waves
How does a car move from one place to another? How do cranes lift such heavy objects?
From ancient times to now, engines have powered people’s lives. Engines! With 25 Science Projects for Kids invites readers ages 7 to 10 to explore engines and deepen their understanding of the history of engines, what makes them hum, and all the special jobs they do for humans. Engines! also examines some of the ways mechanical innovation has backfired, such as how the cotton gin extended the history of slavery in eighteenth-century America.
Explore the world of engines through 25 hands-on, science-minded projects. Fascinating facts, essential questions, links to online resources, and even jokes help support deeper learning!
Try these hands-on engineering projects!
• Construct a rubber band heat engine
• Build a simple electric motor
• Demonstrate pressurized air
• Build a balloon rocket engine
You might think people study chemistry only in laboratories or classrooms—but, actually, chemistry is everywhere!
We observe chemical reactions every day. Have you ever watched fireworks? That’s a chemical reaction. Have you ever found sour milk in your refrigerator? Another chemical reaction! There’s even chemistry happening inside your own body as you break down the food you eat into usable nutrients. In Chemical Reactions! With 25 Science Projects for Kids, readers ages 7 to 10 learn about the atoms and molecules that make up everything in our world and what happens when different atoms and molecules come in contact with each other.
Explore chemical reactions through 25 hands-on, STEM activities, fascinating facts, essential questions, links to online resources, and even jokes that help support deeper learning!
Try these hands-on chemistry experiments!
• Mix up some invisible ink
• Create a hydrophobic tower
• Make some magic sand
• Observe a disappearing eggshell
How does a country rebuild the infrastructure, government, and economy of a huge region while taking steps to resolve the status of 4 million newly freed people?
In Reconstruction: The Rebuilding of the United States After the Civil War, middle schoolers examine the era from 1865 to 1877, a time when the United States wrestled with questions that still plague the country today. Who should get access to citizenship and voting rights? How should the power of the federal government be balanced against the rights of the states? What is the proper government response to white supremacy?
Essential questions guide readers’ investigations while hands-on activities promote critical and creative problem solving and text-to-world connections highlight the way the past provides context for the present-day world.
Try these critical-thinking activities!
• Renegotiate a sharecropping contract
• Dismantle the single-story stereotype
• Design a monument to memorialize Reconstruction
• Map 40 acres and a mule
