Making Waves

Anxious to make a splash with the young Einsteins in your family? Experiments involving water are always a hit. Scientist Alan Nursall of Science North in Sudbury, Ontario, recommends these kid-friendly water experiments.

Larger Than Life. Make a giant magnifying lense by suspending a puddle of water on a piece of plastic wrap. If you look through the lens, you will notice that the objects lying underneath it are magnified many times over. Encourage your child to explore all the wonders of the beach - the multicoloured grains of sand and the tiny insects floating on the surface of the water - by looking through your homemade lens.

In The Drink. Even though it may look crystal clear to the naked eye, there's much more to water than - well - just water! Encourage your child to pour lake, river, or swamp water through a coffee filter. She should find traces of all kinds of interesting materials: sediment, pine needles, algae, tiny insects, and much more.

Go With The Flow. While the surface of the water may seem to be completely still, most bodies of water are in a state of perpetual motion. Help your child to make a paper boat out of an old sheet of newspaper and launch it from the side of the pool or the edge of the water. Encourage your child to observe how quickly the boat is moving, and to notice whether it ends up getting marooned somewhere (i.e. under someone's dock or in a pool water intake filter!)

Bubble Trouble. If you're fortunate enough to visit the ocean, fill a dishpan with salt water and add a few drops of dish detergent. Ask your child to stir the water and try to make bubbles. He will discover that you can't make bubbles using ordinary dish detergent and salt water because the salt in the water interferes with the action of the dish detergent. This explains why sailors and others who spend time at sea use special soaps that are designed to work in sea water.