Experiments
Hands-on biology, chemistry and physics for grades 9–12, using materials you can find at home or in the market. Each one has a step-by-step guide, a video, and a lab assistant to help when you get stuck.
- Grade 9 · ⚛️ Physics20 min
Build a density tower in a glass
Stack honey, water and cooking oil in one glass and watch them refuse to mix. Then drop in small objects and see where each one floats.
🟢Easy🧰6 materials - Grade 9 · 🧪 Chemistry40 min
Get clean salt back from salty sand
Mix salt and sand, then separate them again using dissolving, filtering and evaporation — the same steps used to make salt from Afar brine.
🟢Easy🧰6 materials - Grade 9 · 🧬 Biology25 min
Which foods contain starch?
Use a drop of iodine antiseptic from the pharmacy to test injera, potato, bread, sugar and more for starch.
🟢Easy🧰4 materials - Grade 10 · ⚛️ Physics35 min
Light an LED with a lemon battery
Turn lemons, coins and nails into a battery and measure how connecting cells in series raises the voltage.
🟠Medium🧰6 materials - Grade 10 · 🧪 Chemistry20 min
What makes iron rust?
Set up four nails in different conditions and find out which ingredients rusting really needs.
🟢Easy🧰5 materials - Grade 10 · 🧬 Biology30 min
Blow up a balloon with yeast
Feed yeast sugar in a bottle and capture the carbon dioxide it releases during respiration — the same process that makes injera batter bubble.
🟢Easy🧰6 materials - Grade 11 · ⚛️ Physics20 min
Measure your own walking speed
Time yourself over 10 metres at three different paces and calculate real velocities with v = Δx / Δt.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰4 materials - Grade 11 · ⚛️ Physics10 min
The coin and card — see inertia for yourself
Flick a card out from under a coin and watch Newton's first law drop it straight into a cup.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰3 materials - Grade 11 · ⚛️ Physics10 min
Galileo's race: stone vs paper
Drop a stone and a sheet of paper, then crumple the paper and race them again. Discover what really controls how fast things fall.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰2 materials - Grade 11 · ⚛️ Physics15 min
Pendulum: watch energy trade places
Build a pendulum from a string and a key, and watch potential energy turn into kinetic energy and back again.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰3 materials - Grade 11 · 🧪 Chemistry30 min
Feel how big Avogadro's number really is — using rice
Weigh 100 grains of rice, then calculate how much a mole of rice would weigh. The answer shows just how tiny atoms are.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰3 materials - Grade 11 · 🧪 Chemistry35 min
Make your own pH indicator from red cabbage
Boil red cabbage to make a colour-changing indicator, then test lemon juice, vinegar, baking soda, soap and ash water.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰4 materials - Grade 11 · 🧬 Biology15 min
See real plant cells without a microscope (onion skin)
Peel the thin inner skin of an onion and hold it to the light to see rows of real plant cells.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰5 materials - Grade 11 · 🧬 Biology15 min
Watch mitosis grow a plant from a single seed
Sprout beans on damp cotton and measure root growth every day — mitosis made visible.
🎥Video🟢Easy🧰4 materials - Grade 11 · 🧬 Biology30 min
Extract real DNA from a strawberry
Use soap, salt and cold alcohol to pull visible strands of DNA out of a strawberry — the experiment from our first school session with The Science Basement.
🎥Video🟠Medium🧰9 materials - Grade 12 · ⚛️ Physics30 min
Build an electromagnet from a nail
Wrap wire around an iron nail, connect a battery, and pick up pins. Then change the number of turns and measure the difference.
🟠Medium🧰5 materials - Grade 12 · 🧪 Chemistry30 min
Race fizzing tablets in hot and cold water
Time how long an effervescent tablet takes to dissolve at different temperatures and particle sizes, and plot reaction rate.
🟢Easy🧰5 materials - Grade 12 · 🧬 Biology25 min
Find the enzyme in a potato
Add hydrogen peroxide to raw and boiled potato and watch the enzyme catalase at work — then see what heat does to it.
🟠Medium🧰5 materials