Delia Zepeda, a teacher at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Day School in Coconut Grove, Florida made science fun at the school’s Family Math, Science and Technology Night in January.

The school celebrated its third year of getting kindergarten to third graders excited about science, math and technology.

They used slime, Baby Soda Bottle Test Tubes, Geyser Tubes, Windbags and magnets from SteveSpanglerScience.com. A favorite was the One Breath Windbags.

Mrs. Zepeda shared their experience with all of us at Steve Spangler Science, “the wind bags were a big hit. We had so much fun watching the parents trying to blow them up the wrong way, we finally felt sorry for them and our student volunteers showed them the correct method.”

The students also enjoyed getting splashed by Mentos and Diet Coke geysers.

Mrs. Zepeda, along with Mr. Jacomino and Mrs. Tappert at the school held the event. The teachers did such a good job, the students rank Math and Science night right up there with Field Day, “My students are still stopping me and saying thank you for the best day at school. Our students came away loving science and math again.”

The teachers are now rock stars to the students and parents. Here are a few comments from parents  -

“AMAZING math and Science night! Thank you so much for the wonderful evening. My kids were in heaven. Aiden said it was “the best day ever at school”. These things are a very big deal to them and they will never forget the experiences”.

“At one point in the evening, I remember being stuck in a corner because there was no space to walk!  I don’t know about you but my favorite station was the frog slime…lol”

“All of the credit though, has to be given to Mrs. Zepeda and Mrs. Tappert for organizing such a great event every year.  Thank you both for putting together such a wonderful experience for our kids!”

“These two ladies are AMAZING!!!!  What a privilege it is for our students to benefit from their PASSION!!!

Congratulations to all three teachers for making science an experience the students and parents will remember.

When you picture a tornado, most of us imagine a whirling column of air poking down from the clouds. Air tornadoes are created when warm air on the ground rises, and cool air comes in from above at a perpendicular angle.  The hot air mixing with the cold air creates the rotation of a tornado. But not all tornadoes come from the sky.

Fire tornadoes are created when heated air from a fire rises and mixes with strong air currents (often whipping through the trees). This causes the air molecules to spin and shape the flame into the shape of a tornado. Firefighters are cautious of fire tornadoes because they can whip through the tops of trees catching other trees on fire. Watch the video for a cool demonstration on how fire tornadoes work.

Have you ever wanted to be a magician? Or do you want to impress your friends? All you need is a few Pyrex beakers, water, Wesson vegetable oil and Pyrex stir rods. The Wesson oil has the same index of refraction as a special kind of glass that has gone through a tremendous amount of heat called Pyrex. When you place the stir stick in the oil, it looks like the stick disappears in the oil. The secret behind this cool science experiment is the index of refraction.

Have you signed up for your school’s science fair but haven’t picked a science fair project? Or are you thinking about joining your science fair but don’t know where to start?

Participating in the science fair is an amazing opportunity to learn about the scientific method, ask questions, explore, make new discoveries and gain an understanding of how science works.

The start to a great science fair project is asking questions. Performing an experiment is not a science fair project.

To find a science fair project, browse through the experiment library and start asking questions like “why does it work that way,” “what if I did it this way?”

For example, dropping Mentos into Diet Coke is not a science fair project. It’s a science demonstration. Asking questions like “what temperature of Diet Coke will make the tallest geyser,” or “what soda makes the shortest geyser?” are good science fair projects.

Asking questions will help you decide what you want to learn from the project. And is step one in the scientific method.

After you settle on a question to answer, start step two - research. Gather information about your question. Ask your science teacher and librarian for tips on how to find detailed information for your project.

The third step is hypothesis. Based on the research you have gathered, make an educated guess about what you think the outcome of your experiment will be.

In the fourth step is procedure. This is where you perform your experiment.

Take detailed notes about the processes and results of your experiment. The fifth step is collecting your data. Document every part of your experiment. Take notes, draw pictures, use your camera and anything else that will help keep track of every step of your procedure.

The sixth step is observations. Write a description of what you discovered from your experiment.

The final step is your conclusion. Was your hypothesis correct or incorrect? Summarize the results of your experiment and compare the results to your original guess, and remember… it’s okay if your hypothesis was wrong. That is all part of the scientific process.

For more information, science fair project ideas and help on putting together an amazing science fair experiment check out the Science Fair section on SteveSpanglerScience.com.

If you are excited about your child’s science fair project, they will be excited too! Use this opportunity to teach your child the importance of building life long learning skills. Conducting science experiments and teaching process skills take time, and the unfortunate truth is that teachers may not have the necessary time in class to allow the children to explore on their own. That’s why it’s so important for you as the parent to take the time to create a meaningful learning experience and to rekindle your child’s natural sense of wonder.

Bubbles are magical and captivating. Who doesn’t like playing with bubbles? The key is the perfect bubble solution. Combining water and dish soap is good, but not perfect. Some people think glycerin and water works well. It’s still not perfect. If you are a serious bubblologist or bubble connoisseur, this recipe is for you. With this recipe, a secret and some imagination you will make big bubbles, bubbles inside bubbles and bouncing bubbles. Click here for the bubble recipe >

Written by Susan Wells, MommyBlogger at SteveSpanglerScience.com

“Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Now Twitter has the…Shorty Awards” – The New York Times

The Shorty Awards celebrate the best people and organizations on Twitter. They are supported and judged by the Twitter community who picks the nominees and votes on them.  Winners in 27 categories will be announced  in New York  in March.

We are proud to announce that our own Steve Spangler has been nominated in the #science category for a Shorty Award.

If you’d like to vote for Steve, go to the Shorty Awards website and send the tweet out for @stevespangler. Or you can send a tweet straight thru your Twitter account. The tweet must say:

“I nominate @SteveSpangler for a Shorty Award in #science because…”

The “because” part is the most important piece. You must add a why Steve is deserving of this award or the vote will not count.

Everyone knows that Halloween is my favorite holiday. That doesn’t stop me from finding experiments for every holiday year round. Why not mix a little science into your holiday calendar? I don’t have a secret formula for the science of relationships, but I have some fun ideas to do this February.

For Valentine’s this year, don’t go to the store and buy the boring paper Valentines. Add a little “oooh and ahhh” while spreading the love. Take test tubes –or my favorite, Baby Soda Bottles– fill them with candy and add an experiment that the recipient can perform after the candy is gone.

If you are looking for some activities to do during a Valentine’s party or for a project, get some Goldenrod indicator paper. When this special paper meets a basic substance, it turns bright red. Cut out hearts or favorite Valentine shapes and you will end up with the coolest Valentines around.

And finally, make sure you have plenty of hand boilers to show how “hot” you are. Or maybe how “not” you are, by using them to demonstrate the relationship between temperature and pressure.

For more ideas to bring science into your Valentine’s Day, check out our Valentine’s section for activities and experiments.

Just mention the Periodic Table of Elements to a high school student, and you’re likely to see them break out in a rash. Being forced to memorize the elements is just cruel and unusual punishment. Companies like BP are coming along and trying to bring a little more real-world connection to the elements… and they’ve done a nice job.

The Tea Bag Rocket is really an adaptation of a classic science demonstration called the Ditto Paper Rocket. If you’re old enough to have experienced Ditto paper, you’ll recall the bluish-purple ink and that unforgettable smell of freshly printed copies. (Come to find out… both the Ditto machine solvent and the ink were highly toxic, but no one seemed to care back then.) Each piece of Ditto paper had a sheet of tissue paper that separated the two-part form, and it was this discarded piece of paper that kids used to make the “rocket.” Since Ditto paper is a thing of the past, science teachers found a simple replacement – a tea bag.

It’s a really cool science puzzle… balancing a pile of nails on the head of a stationary nail. I’ve always liked this puzzle because it gets kids thinking about the center of gravity. In this video, we substituted the small, table-top version of the set-up for a dozen large nails – like the kind you would use for landscaping. Mark Koebrich was surprised by the solution, but I was surprised to see how much he liked the dumb balancing bird demo. Just goes to show you that you never know which ideas are going to stick.

Our own Julie Gintzler (follow @juliegintzler) is on hand in Danville, Illinois for a new Guinness World Record attempt for 2,500 MENTOS® powered soda geysers. The event organizers contacted Steve Spangler Science in their initial planning stages to see if they could gain some tips and tricks from our past MENTOS geyser records. When you’re attempting a geyser launch this big, you need a great trigger device… and that’s a perfect job for our Geyser Tube.

Be Amazing! Toys, the distributor and of Steve Spangler’s Geyser Tube toy, supported the event with the donation of the Geyser Tubes toys. “When Steve contacted us about the event and asked for Be Amazing! Toys to partner with him and share in our support, we were excited to participate,” said Marc Greenberg, Vice-President of Marketing at Be Amazing! Toys. “We know first hand the amount of effort it takes to pull off a Guinness World Record, and using the event to support Shaken Baby Syndrome is a great combination.”

A large crowd of people from Danville, Illinois came out this morning to have some fun and to support Reagan’s Rescue for Shaken Baby Syndrome. Julie Gintzler is at the event representing Steve Spangler Science and Be Amazing! Toys and will have the first video and photos in minutes.

It’s not supposed to snow in Iraq… but that didn’t stop the 34th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army stationed in Iraq. Shelli Markgraf shared these pictures of her husband’s division making a pile of snow in seconds by adding water to our Insta-Snow® powder. By looking at the additional pictures, you might be lead to believe that this was just a fun activity for our soldiers to pass the time… but you would be wrong.

In fact, the eruption of snow was used as a small scale experiment to see what would happen if millions of pounds of Insta-Snow were dropped from helicopters, instantly mixing with water, erupting into massive mountains of snow, with desert winds whipping the snow into a blizzard-like frenzy. Yes, this would confuse the enemy.

After pondering the idea for a few seconds, someone asked, “Where are we going to find the water in the desert to make the reaction work?” It took exactly 1.3 seconds to completely abandon the blizzard idea, and the soldiers resorted to making snow angels on the surface of the sun.

You might have overheard your local television meteorologist say something about a blue moon. Of course, my boys were hoping to see a real blue moon, but instead, they were treated to the second full moon of the month. According to popular definition, a blue moon is the second full moon in a month… and as you might expect, NASA has more to say about it…

According to modern folklore, a Blue Moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. Usually months have only one full moon, but occasionally a second one sneaks in. Full moons are separated by 29 days, while most months are 30 or 31 days long; so it is possible to fit two full moons in a single month. This happens every two and a half years, on average.

But you can imagine the disappointment in their voices as my three boys ran outside to see… a normal full moon. “Dad, it’s not blue… that stinks!”

A little more digging on the NASA site and we discovered that there was a time when people on Earth saw a real blue moon.

There was a time, not long ago, when people saw blue moons almost every night. Full moons, half moons, crescent moons–they were all blue, except some nights when they were green. The time was 1883, the year an Indonesian volcano named Krakatoa exploded. Scientists liken the blast to a 100-megaton nuclear bomb. Fully 600 km away, people heard the noise as loud as a cannon shot. Plumes of ash rose to the very top of Earth’s atmosphere. And the moon turned blue. Krakatoa’s ash is the reason. Some of the ash-clouds were filled with particles about 1 micron (one millionth of a meter) wide–the right size to strongly scatter red light, while allowing other colors to pass. White moonbeams shining through the clouds emerged blue, and sometimes green.

Blue moons have capture the attention people for years… in songs, art, movie, and yes, the beer. Becky Tanner from the Associated Press wrote, “During the midst of the Great Depression in 1934, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote this song…

Blue moon, you saw me standing alone,
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own.
Blue moon, you knew just what I was there for,
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for.

This is all well and good… unless you’re a seven year old who wants to see a blue moon. To solve the problem, my oldest (11 years old) ran downstairs and grabbed a pair of 3D glasses (the ones with the blue and red lenses) and told his brother to put on the glasses and look at the moon.

“Close your right eye and you’ll see a blue moon,” the oldest explained.

“Oh, now I see the blue moon.” And just like that, the problem was solved. If only everything was that easy.

It’s been quite a year for us at Steve Spangler Science… in fact, when the year starts out with 50 off your closest friends helping you wish Ellen DeGeneres a Happy Birthday, you know big things are in store.  Whether we were letting fans ride on the infamous Bed of Nails at NAEYC 2009 or launching trash cans with a police force audience, we can guarantee that 2009 was never boring.  We’ve compiled some of our favorite highlights from the year, so feel free to browse through them and go back with us as we reminisce about our favorite moments from 2009… can you imagine what 2010 has in store?

Happy Birthday Ellen!

Our 2009 Boot Camp tour kicks off in Oklahoma City, with a great group of teachers.

Our team stormed Toy Fair and set off a few geysers in the process.

Steve Spangler Science Jelly Marbles were featured on the prime-time hit series Numb3rs.

I debuted what would become one of our most requested experiments… Laminar Flow.

The face of our Insta-Snow product, Arianne Heaton, headed to college, years after she was my student at Willow Creek Elementary.

I spoke to an awesome group of teachers at the Junior League of Greater Princeton.

I was honored to have the amazing opportunity to visit Ireland and present a seminar for the Irish Science Teacher’s Association.

My St. Patrick’s Day festivities earned me a (prestigious?) Geek Dad Honor.

We debuted our Experiment of the Week widget for fans and friends to post on their blogs and the downloads haven’t stopped since!

I had the opportunity to let Ellen DeGeneres ride the Bed of Nails on my March appearance on Ellen’s show.

We honored some amazing teachers when we celebrated Teacher Appreciation Month at SteveSpanglerScience.com.

We enlisted an unexpected “audience” when our Flying Trash Can experiments brought the police to our offices.

I am proud to say that we won two Multi-Chanel Merchant awards, including Best Website of the Year.

We received a Guinness World Record and educated over 5,000 students with our first annual Weather and Science Day at Coor’s Field.

We took our teacher training experience to a whole new level with our first-ever Science at Sea program.

In conjunction with Klutz Press, we launched a new book, Boom Splat Kablooey!, and a new depth charge for our Geyser Tube.

I had the chance to spend some time with the Evolution of Dance guy, Judson Laipply, and record one really cool video.

I took on the media hype and helped 9News determine if the “Balloon Boy” balloon could have lifted the weight of a small child.

We launched one of my favorite products at SteveSpanglerScience.com this year… Film Canister Rockets!

After the huge success of the Bed of Nails on the Ellen DeGeneres show, we decided to bring the experience to the teachers at NAEYC 2009.

I had the opportunity to speak to a great group of teachers at the Reach Them to Teach Them conference.

Our Spangler Science team pulled off a surprise assembly for some deserving kids in the community… and taught them how to make “snow.”

My son, Jack, tackled that age-old question, “Is double-dipping your chip as bad as licking the whole bowl?”

We debuted another line of educational toys in conjunction with SONIC restaurants.

In a time when everyone is cutting their budgets, I’m so happy to get to announce that the Amgen Corporation continues to support great science teachers with their generous award of $10,000. The Amgen Award for Science Teaching Excellence honors innovative teachers who are making a difference in science education. It has been my honor to participate in the Colorado awards presentation and I also served on the panel of judges several years back. The award is just as it reads… $5,000 for you and $5,000 for your school. Applicants must work in communities in which Amgen has key operating sites including California, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Washington and Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec).

Learn More About the Amgen Award

Amgen, a biotechnology pioneer, discovers, develops, manufactures and markets important human therapeutics for serious illnesses. Amgen is committed to dramatically improving people’s lives – not only through the therapeutics we deliver to patients but also through supporting programs that advance science literacy throughout North America.

The Amgen Award for Science Teaching Excellence (AASTE) is an annual awards program that recognizes extraordinary contributions by educators across the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada who are elevating the level of science literacy through creativity in the classroom and motivation of students. An independent panel of judges selects the winners based on the following criteria: creativity and effectiveness of teaching methods; the plan for the use of grant money to improve science education resources in their schools; and an innovative science lesson plan showcasing innovative methods in the classroom.

Since the program’s inception in 1992, Amgen has awarded nearly $2.5 million to public and private school science teachers, grades K-12, in communities in which Amgen operates.

Following an extensive judging process, 34 science teachers will be chosen for the award. The selected winners from California, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Washington and Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec) will receive an unrestricted cash award of $5,000 USD or $5,000 CAD and the recipient’s school will receive a restricted grant of $5,000 USD or $5,000 CAD to be utilized for the expansion or enhancement of a school science program, for science resources, or for the professional development of the school’s science teachers.

Eligibility:

1. Applicants for this award must be full-time classroom teachers of grades K–12 in a public or private school setting and whose major responsibilities include teaching science. Additionally, applicants must serve one single school facility.
2. Applicants must be teaching full time at time of application submission and throughout the following academic year. Applicants must have at least three years of experience teaching science in grades K–12.
3. Applicants must work in communities in which Amgen has key operating sites: California, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, Washington and Canada (Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec).
4. Immediate-family members of Amgen staff are not eligible to receive this award.
5. Teachers who are past winners of the Amgen Award for Science Teaching Excellence are not eligible.
6. Schools that are past recipients of the Amgen Award for Science Teaching Excellence are not eligible in consecutive years.