10 April Fool's Day Science Tricks That Will Blow Your Mind

Expect the unexpected today because it's April Fool's Day! With these proven STEM activities, you might find some corny jokes and become a magician.

10 April Fool's Day Science Tricks That Will Blow Your Mind
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1. Disappearing Color

Materials: Cranberry juice, clear glass, eyedropper and bleach

Instruction: Pour about half a cup of cranberry juice into the transparent glass and add bleach to the juice using the eyedropper. Keep adding until the juice turns yellow. Slowly pour cranberry juice into the glass and see how the color disappears.

2. Disappearing Message

Teach students how to utilize ethanol, sodium hydroxide solution, and thymolphthalein to demonstrate how a change in pH affects the color of an indicator. The end product can be used as disappearing ink. This one takes approximately thirty minutes and is quite enjoyable. You can find the activity here.

3. Fool's Gold

Test your child or student's knowledge about gold by presenting them with a pyrite. Check if they will find out that the material is not gold.

Pyrite is the most frequent mineral confused for gold is pyrite; thus, the moniker fool's gold. There are only three minerals that have a gold-like appearance. Weathered mica and chalcopyrite can also resemble gold. When pressed with a metal point, these minerals will crumble, powder, or flake, while real gold will gouge or indent like soft lead. Furthermore, when real gold is scraped across an unglazed porcelain item, it leaves a brilliant yellow streak. Common micas leave a white streak, while pyrite and chalcopyrite leave a dark green to black streak.

4. Eat an Aquifer

Gather a transparent cup, a straw, sweets, soda, food coloring, ice cream, and cookies. Yes, this has all the makings of a perfect science project. An aquifer is an underground water storage system that you can eat. Monique Warren, an environmental engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, shows you how to make an example of one. Check this out for the details.

5. Rainbow Milk

Materials: Milk, food coloring and toothpicks

Instructions: Pour some milk into a bowl and drop each of the four different food colorings close to one another. Dip a toothpick in liquid soap and place it in the middle of the container without touching the food coloring. Hold the toothpick down and watch closely what happens. Substances can be polar, nonpolar, or both, so they will interact depending on their polarity.

6. Bond Energy

This is a relatively easy experience; you only need a plastic spoon. Blow a couple of times into the spoon's bowl and hang the spoon on your nose. Try to hang the spoon without blowing it, but it won't stick. Apparently, the hydrogen bonds connect the water vapor in our breath to the moisture on our nose.

7. Rubber Band Energy

Still on energy, feel how heat energy changes when the molecules in rubber align themselves in different ways. You will only need rubber bands for this.

Take a thick rubber band and stretch it out using two or three fingers, then place it next to your forehead. As you stretch the rubber band, notice the temperature difference. Keep the rubber band in the same place and slowly contract it. Did you feel a temperature change?

8. Magic breaking pencil

Pour half the oil and half the water into a tall, transparent glass. Light waves move through materials, including air, water, and oil, at varying speeds. After lowering their pencils into the water, rotate them slowly. Depending on how you look at it, the pencil will look broken.

ALSO READ: What Is Organic Chemistry? Tips on How To Study It

9. Count the number of Fs

Ask your children or students to read the following phrase and ask them to count the number of Fs.

"Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of years."

Give them thirty seconds. After that, make the sentence invisible. View the count of Fs students.

It's common knowledge that there are three Fs. However, the letter "F" appears six times in that line! The way native English speakers comprehend the language is the reason behind the occurrence. When it comes to language reading, we are pros. But because our unconscious mind informs us that words like "of," "the," and "a" don't have much significance or weight, we naturally tend to disregard them.

10. Exploding toothpaste

Making exploding toothpaste combines chemistry, surface tension, catalysts, and reaction. You can create a frothy "toothpaste" that erupts into the air by mixing liquid dish soap, hydrogen peroxide, food coloring, safety supplies, and a few other items with a few magical components. Visit the Scientific American's website for more information.