Putty is proof that learning can be fun! Share the wonderful world of polymers with your class through an experiment. Young scientists create their own silly putty, then examine its properties.

From windows that tint themselves to OLED technology, electrochromic polymers are redefining our ideas about conducting materials! Introduce your chemistry class to the emerging trend with an exciting lab activity. Budding materials...

Young scientists investigate the scientific concepts and principles that help make common toys such as hula hoops, yo-yos, slinkies, and silly putty work. As a class, they read "Backyard Rocket Science, Served Wet" to get a look behind...

The radical reactions of polymers seems abstract to many pupils, but this instructional activity turns them into a fun building game. Scholars use dice and building pieces to build polymers. Then, they determine the theoretical and...

What an exciting way to introduce your blossoming chemists to the world of metals, nonmetals, metalloids, and polymers! Here is a lab activity that is designed to allow pupils the opportunity to visualize the reaction of metals,...

It might be silly to determine the creep rate of putty but groups will enjoy making different formulations of silly putty and playing with them to understand how the different mixtures behave. The second part of the activity has groups...

Cookies are definitely important for scientific learning. To study aerogels, future engineers use chocolate chip cookie dough to make models. Their task is to design a process that removes the chocolate chips from the cookie dough,...

How do green plastics reduce waste and environmental pollution? Budding scientists create and test a variety of compounds used in green plastics during an insightful experiment. Beginning with startling statistics and ending with...

Sometimes it's okay to eat your science experiment. A hands-on activity has pupils create models for algae to learn about its cellular structure. The best part of the experiment? The resulting juice-filled gels are edible—yum!

Mold your learners into materials engineers. Using glue, Borax, and water, scholars create a viscoelastic material. But your class might know it by another name—Silly Putty.

Stephen Perry invented and patented the modern rubber band in 1845. Young scientists put his discovery to work as they use rubber bands to observe entropy and enthalpy. They determine the change in free energy to figure out if it...