VanCleave's Science Fun

Your Guide to Science Projects, Fun Experiments, and Science Research

Supernova

By

Photos Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI A supernova is a star that is very dim then suddenly it becomes very bright. In the past, novae were at first thought to be new stars. But they are not new. Instead, they are variable stars, meaning their brightness changes. It can be a star too faint to see and then […]

Nebula: Eskimo

By

Photos Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI A nebula is a cloud of gas and dust in space. Nebulae can be tens to hundreds of light-years across. The photo of the nebula was taken by Hubble, NASA’s space telescope. It looks much like  abstract art. Its official name is Nebula NGC 2392, but it is all called “Eskimo” because […]

Stars: Birth and Death

By

The photo shown was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers describe it as representing the life cycle of stars. The bright blue area on the upper left is a blue supergiant, which is a dying star. Sugergiants are very bright and have a diameter over 100 times that of the Sun. The golden region […]

Bugs

By

Bug is a term that is often used to indicate any creepy crawler, including spiders and scorpions. With this broad definition of a bug, insects  might be considered a creepy crawler and thus be called a bug. But not all bugs are insects. You can distinguish insects from other bugs using the “3 by 3 […]

Janice’s Magic Viewer

By

Reading is something that many kids have problems with. But it is more than just recognizing the words, they have problems with reading comprehension. Some studies associate the ability to form mental pictures to reading comprehension. In other words, kids need to imagine what is happening instead of always seeing a picture. “Clip art licensed from […]

Hubble

By

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a reflector telescope that orbits the Earth every 96 minutes. This “eye in the sky” moves in an orbit that is about 600 km (375 miles) above Earth. The reason that this telescope is so much better than telescopes on Earth, is that the atmosphere above it is very […]

Space Distance

By

Speed measures the distance traveled in a certain amount of time. Scientists use the metric system, thus the speed of light is 300,000 km per sec. This is read as three hundred kilometers per second. Try This! * Say the words “One thousand and one.” It takes about one second to say these words. During […]

Crickets vs. Spiders

By

Bug is a term that is often used to indicate any creepy crawler. Some people call both spiders and crickets bugs. While both might be “creepy crawlers” they are very different. One difference between crickets and spiders are their number of legs. The cricket in the diagram to the right has six legs. There are […]

ButterflyWing Color

By

You can use a butterfly wing craft to teach camouflage. First prepare a butterfly wing for each child. This can be done by folding one-fourth of a sheet of green construction paper in half. Draw the wing pattern shown, and then cut it out. Cut a large leaf from the remaining section of the green […]