Try This at Home

Hey, kids! Do try these cool science activities at home! They’re easy, fun and most can be done with stuff you have around the house. Create your own magnetic field lines, expose the iron in your cereal, or make an electromagnet from scratch! Your teachers or parents may even want to get in on the fun.

• A Portrait of Magnetism: Drawing Field Lines
  Magnets are all around us, usually hidden from view inside computers, phones and other items we rely on. Also hidden are the fields these magnets generate. With this activity you can – abracadabra – make the field lines appear!
  
• Eye-eye, Popeye! Seeing Iron in Food
  Iron's good for more than making magnets and steel beams. It's a critical ingredient for people, too, as any nutritionist will tell you! It's all the same stuff – though it tastes better in cashews than in bar magnets! Try this activity to reveal the iron hidden in your foods.
• Follow the Needle: Making a Compass
  Compasses are actually very simple. If you ever forget which way is north, follow these steps to make one yourself.
• Magnet Maker: Assembling an Electromagnet
  What do you get when you mix a battery, a bit of copper wire and a nail? One of the most important forces in science. Try it yourself and let the force be with you!
• A Magnet that Drips: Making Ferrofluids
  This iron-packed substance has a dual personality; one second it's a liquid, the next it's a solid. Mix up a batch at home and see how this unique stuff works.
• Now You See It: Visualizing Field Lines
  Your compass will point the way as you seek to reveal the invisible field lines around a bar magnet in this easy activity.

For more information contact Carlos Villa at villa@magnet.fsu.edu or (850) 644-7191.