Affordable Fun Physics Labs!

Making a Physics Lab fun for students of all ages is cheap and easy!

In my last blog post I gave ten reasons why you should think about physics for your children. This time, I am going to talk about how you can make physics fun for your children with interesting, exciting, and affordable labs.

Physics with Toys

All kids like playing with toys, but what they might not know is that the same toys that they play with are largely physics based and can often be used as physics labs. Examples of these toys are a nerf-guns, slinky, bubble makers, magnets and even the operation game. All of these games, children love to play and can be mesmerizing and enjoyable before and after the science lesson. Buying toys to do labs with is also far cheaper than purchasing science equipment from educational suppliers.

Lego

Lego is my favorite toy! I had Lego as a kid and many kids love playing with it. If you have Lego at home, you already have the basic building blocks to a physics lab. If you wanted to go beyond the basics, Lego also sells great robotics and mechanical toys that can be used to build cranes, cars, robots and all types of other interesting mechanical toys that have great learning value.

Did You Know: A lot of measurements can be done with things already in the home?

Doing detailed physics labs requires equipment to take measurements. Many of these measurements can be done with equipment from home. For example, using a kitchen scale for mass and weight, thermometer to measure temperature, tape measure and stopwatch. These basics can be used for a large number of physics labs.

Making and Taking Things Apart…

If you’re handy or enjoy dismantling things or building things (or your kids do), many household appliances can be a physics schooling goldmine! Given a screwdriver and a wrench, any broken old mechanical or electrical things can teach so much. In fact, just understanding how tools work – understanding torque or simple machines can teach physics principles.

Virtual Labs

Not all labs can be conducted easily without a high scale lab. In these cases, virtual labs allow a practical learning experience via a computer and an internet connection. Many of these virtual labs include measuring, graphs and are really interactive.

As you can see, conducting physics labs at home can be fun, interesting, inexpensive and you may already have most of the things needed. As always, you may need to add to what you already have, but this is to be expected.

Please visit Coach Cowland Science for more physics news and lesson plan ideas!