Yeric's at it again! He's back with a new video about light—available in both English and Spanish. Join Yeric as you get some background and then learn how to make a solar oven!

This past weekend, a lot of New Hampshire saw its first big snow storm. But maybe where you are, you only got a couple of inches of snow or at this point it’s all turned to ice. So let’s celebrate the first big winter weather event with some indoor snow science activities!

Have you ever brought apple slices to school for lunch? When you packed them in your lunchbox, they were white on the inside, but by lunchtime, all the slices have turned brown. It doesn’t change the taste, but it certainly doesn’t look as appetizing. So what happened? Today, let’s talk about why sliced fruit turns brown and then experiment with ways to prevent that browning!

There’s nothing like a homemade loaf of bread—the crispy crust, the soft interior, and the bouncy texture—but what is it that makes bread so good? Well, as we’ve learned in our previous installments of Kitchen Chemistry, it’s a hefty dose of science! Today, let’s explore the science of bread!

Learn what each ingredient adds to the recipe, and then try making our own loaf of bread, in a tasty application of science that would make a great addition to your Thanksgiving table!

To take part in science, you might think that you need to study for a long time, earn a degree or two, and spend years running experiments and research projects. But science is for more than just the experts—it’s for everyone! In fact, volunteers who may not have specialized backgrounds or trainings help make a lot of career scientists’ projects possible. This group effort between professional and amateur scientists to advance research in all sorts of fields is called citizen science.

Since the turn of the twentieth century, audiences have been amazed by the technical and artistic marvel that is motion pictures. The very first movies were live-action, but it wasn’t long until artists started bringing their drawings to life in animated shorts and films.

Let’s learn about why we see animation, how computer science plays a big part in some of your favorite movies, and how to make our own Victorian animation device, a zoetrope!

Back in March, we talked a little about the history of pi and saw an interesting way to calculate the mathematical constant with Buffon’s Needle Problem. Today, let’s return to everyone’s favorite irrational number with an autumnal twist—using pumpkins to explore pi!

Here in New England, autumn is a favorite season for many for a variety of reasons: the cool, crisp weather, the abundance of fall produce like apples and pumpkins (and the tasty treats made with those!), and the beautiful changing leaves. But with the changing of the seasons comes the question of why we see this change at all. So today, let’s explore why the leaves change color in the fall. Then, once we know the “why,” let’s save a little bit of fall by making fall leaf pigment prints!

As part of our 2020 celebration of women in STEM—funded, in part, by the Association for Science & Technology Centers’ and Lyda Hill Philanthropies’ If/Then initiative—we are focusing in early September on the joys of engineering! On August 30 we premiered a video on Facebook, in which members of our Education team discuss engineering, machine basics, and how to bring STEM into your own home with materials that you already have handy.

Now we’re handing over the reigns to you, our visitors…Watch the video presentation here (in case you missed it on 8/30), then read on for details on how to submit your own entry in our 2020 Rube Goldberg Machine DIY Challenge! Three winning teams (divided by age group) will win a family membership to the Discovery Center.

People have always been fascinated with the world around us and the cycles it goes through, and one of the most famous examples of that is Stonehenge. Stonehenge is an ancient monument in England, and it consists on a ring of large standing stones. There are around 160 of these stones, each about 13 feet high and 7 feet wide.

For decades, archaeologists and historians have debated why Stonehenge was built, but there’s no denying that there is a relationship between the seasons and this prehistoric site. Every year, on both the winter and summer solstices, thousands of people gather at Stonehenge to watch the sunrise. On the days of the solstices, the path of the Sun lines up with the stones, suggesting that the ancient people who built this monument may have had some sort of ritual relating to the changing of the seasons.

Today, we’re challenging you to recreate a scale model of this engineering marvel!

If you live near the Atlantic coast in North America, then you know that summer is both a lovely time to spend by the shore and holds the possibility for some dangerous storms. In the North Atlantic, hurricane season is June 1 through November 30, with activity peaking between August and October. Nearly all tropical storms in the Atlantic area occur during this window, which very nearly lines up with the summer season (June 20-September 22). So why is that?

Let’s learn all about hurricane season and then capture a storm in a bottle by making a hurricane in a jar!

This Saturday—June 20, 2020—marks the official beginning of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, with the occurrence of the June solstice. In celebration, we’re focusing this week’s Distance Learning offerings on seasons. Today we’ll revisit a previous lesson about what causes the Earth’s seasons—with bonus content added to focus on the solstices!

We’re spending the week looking at the planets, and this week’s Saturday STEM challenge is about just that: looking at the planets!

For as long as people have been on Earth, they have been observing the night sky. This week, we’re challenging you to make like ancient civilizations and watch the sky. Using the given information and tools, try to track the planets. Since the sky never looks the same two nights in a row, you can try this challenge for as long as you want, trying to see as many different planets as you can.

We’re spending this week looking at planets! Today, we’ll learn a little about the development of models of the solar system and Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion, and then we’ll simulate how planets move around the Sun by making our own gravity well.

Why do planets orbit around the sun? In this blog post, learn about two different models of the solar system: heliocentric and geocentric. Learn what model is accepted and proved today and demonstrate how the planets revolve around the sun using a fun and simply activity you can do at home!

This week we’re looking at different aspects of flight and ways that we can explore those at home.

This week’s STEM challenge: folding a paper cargo plane. Using a sheet of paper, you want to fold a paper airplane that will glide ten feet (i.e. you can’t just throw it that distance) while carrying as much weight as possible.

This week we’re looking at different aspects of flight and ways that we can explore those at home.

Like most animals, birds have evolved so that their bodies match their behavior—flying birds have hollow bones and light beaks, rather than heavy, bony jaws, to reduce weight, powerful wing muscles to create thrust in flight, and lightweight, smooth feathers to reduce drag. But birds come in all shapes and sizes, and each species of flying bird has specific adaptations for the type of flight they do most.

Today, learn about how different wing shapes affect how a bird flies and then make a flapping bird puppet to simulate how a bird’s wings move through the air!

Parachutes are important because they create drag on a falling object. All object fall to the ground at the same rate. If a human jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, they would hit the ground at too fast a rate to survive. Parachutes collect the air as the person falls to create more drag and slow the person down as they head towards the ground. In this activity you will make your own parachute and test your design to see if it falls safely to the ground.

This week we’re looking at different aspects of flight and ways that we can explore those at home. We’ll start with lift and how air flow helps things like planes get off the ground.

You may have watched a bird flying across an open area and noticed that sometimes the bird flaps its wings and other times it glides with wings stretched out. The flapping helps the bird move forward faster, while the gliding tends to involve more motion up and down in the air column. Airplanes use the same method for flying- engines move the plane forward while the wings influence movement up and down. So, how does a plane get off the ground?