Weird and wonderful science
Just in time for British Science Week—and more importantly, the looming Easter break—the Royal Institution has launched a series of videos with very cool experiments parents can do at home with their children. Get your kids to think scientifically whilst playing with soap boat racers, where the fun of figuring out how to get the fastest boat (using the Ri’s instructions and downloadable boat template) makes learning about surface tension highly entertaining. Or for kids who are tough to impress, try the fizzy bottle rockets (though save this one for outside!). Here, Olympia Brown, of the Ri’s ExpeRimental project, tells us why we should all be introducing our kids to weird science.
by Olympia Brown
Research shows that “children who were read to regularly by their parents at age 5 performed better in…tests at age 16 than those who were not”. Most parents accept that reading to your children when they’re young is a good thing, and that it’s an incredibly important skill which equips children for success in life—but they may not feel the same way about science. This is a pity, because science opens up new ways of looking at and thinking about the world, and can enhance children’s academic and personal lives.
Parents who don’t have fond memories of science at school may not be confident in engaging their children with science activities at home. Some parents turn to books or the internet to help them find various kid-friendly experiments (for example, lots of websites show how to inflate a balloon using baking soda and vinegar and provide a scientific explanation of what happens). However, a lot of these resources do not include some crucial aspects of doing science: looking closely at the world, asking questions, and actually experimenting by identifying variables and seeing what happens when you change them.
ExpeRimental, a project I work on at the Royal Institution, aims to be different. We’ve lots of short films that show parents doing science-based activities with their children. The experiments are fun, easy and cheap, using common household stuff, and are great for kids from 4 to 10. Unlike other online videos which claim to show experiments you can do at home, our films—and the free online resources we’re providing to go with them—focus more on how to take a scientific approach to doing the activity, rather than just following instructions to make something happen. The films also show how to turn what could be a lot of faff for a five-minute payoff into a fun and absorbing activity that can happily while away half an hour or more.
Our films show parents how to stimulate children’s natural curiosity, using play to investigate the wonders of science and encouraging them to start thinking like scientists and engineers. The feedback we’ve had so far is that parents don’t want just scientific facts to regurgitate, but a demonstration of how to interact with children while doing the experiment. Alongside each film is an info sheet with everything you might need, including a clear explanation of the science at work, some ideas of questions to ask while playing, and even badges and certificates for when you’re done. Parents have told us that it was only when they watched one of our films that they realised that talking and asking questions while doing the activity were just as important as following the instructions for making a baking-soda volcano or launching a balloon rocket.
The Royal Institution has a long history of making science accessible to the public. It’s most famous for its Christmas Lectures, and science communicators speak fondly of it as the home of the science demo. The Ri first won renown for the discovery of the process by which power stations generate electricity, as well as of ten of the chemical elements. The sign outside its entrance says ‘science lives here’, but because the Ri wants science to live in everyone’s home, ExpeRimental has its own motto: ‘bringing science home’. We hope that the films and other resources we have created will show that science activities can be just as much fun, and just as easy, as cooking together or doing arts and crafts. The only question is, which activity will you start with?
Watch the ExpeRimental series at here. More films will be released, one per week, until 17 March 2015 when Ri will release three films in one week in celebration of British Science Week. All the films are free to watch.
