On-site Outreach and Tours for Students
Touring students examine Florida Bitter discs, a key component of our magnets.
The Magnet Lab offers a variety of on-site educational opportunities for students from elementary to high school. These opportunities combine a tour with a grade-appropriate, hands-on activity.
Each visit starts with an hour-long tour, led by a Mag Lab scientist or a professional educator from the Center. Highlights of the tour include the electronics shop, the pulsed magnet shop, the resistive magnet shop and the world-record hybrid magnet. Students see real-world scientific research being conducted at a national science research facility.
Following the tour, a Center educator will engage your students in a hands-on activity related to the tour. Covering topics from magnetism to electricity to molecules, these activities challenge students to ask and answer questions about the world around them. Sessions are tailored to specific grade levels and last from 45 minutes to an hour. Choose from one of the activities listed below, or call us to customize a program to meet your specific needs.
These visits can be arranged on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays. Please plan to spend a total of two hours for the tour and outreach activity combined. Be prepared to stay with your students at all times during their visit to the lab; our educators and tour guides are not responsible for the class.
The following activities are offered for outreach visits to the Mag Lab.
Static Electricity and Circuits
Recommended grades: 4-8
Most students’ experience with electricity is limited to static cling and dragging their feet on the carpet to create a spark with the door knob. This activity demonstrates how items can acquire charges from other objects, and how these charges can make objects attract, repel and even create sparks of electricity. Students will create series circuits and parallel circuits and work in teams to create switches and complex circuits using light bulbs as test units. Then they will create small static charges and see a Van de Graaf generator create electric sparks that can be used to transfer charges.
Jumbo-size atoms teach students what molecules are made of.
Advanced Magnetic Exploration
Recommended grades: 4-12
Building on the basic principle that magnets attract and repel, students begin to learn about the magnetic domains of electrons and how electrons work to give things a magnetic field. This leads to the discovery of the magnetic properties of objects that are ferromagnetic and diamagnetic.
Molecule Madness
Recommended grades: 5-12
This activity introduces students to the building blocks of matter. Using special magnetic models as stand-ins for the real things, students will weigh their “newly discovered atoms” using a triple beam balance. They will then name "their" atoms, assign them symbols and combine them into molecules.
Preparing for your Visit
We provide downloadable Pre/Post Materials for some of these activities (listed below), to be used prior to and following your visit to the Mag Lab. We encourage teachers to take advantage of these materials, which help students prepare for and retain the subject matter covered during your class’s visit.
You can get the most out of your class’s visit to the Mag Lab by doing the following:
- Bring one chaperone for every 10 students.
- Please be prompt.
- Prepare your students with the pre-outreach materials. This will help both your students and our guides get the most out of the tours.
- Ask questions! Guides love students (and teachers!) who ask good questions about what they see and about careers at the lab.
We have a steady stream of school groups, scientists and other visitors at the lab. For a list of recent and upcoming visitors, please see our Mag Lab Visitors page.
For information on student tours contact Felicia Hancock at hancock@magnet.fsu.edu or
(850) 645-0034.
For information on tours for the general public, please see our Public Tours page.
