Time for Spooky Halloween Science

By Amy Cowen on October 28, 2013 9:00 AM

As trick-or-treat night approaches, we have plenty of suggestions for hands-on science you can fit in with Halloween festivities and discussions!

Meet your kids where they are—in the Halloween mindset! Science Buddies has great ideas for giving Halloween a boost of hands-on science.

Every year we highlight projects at Science Buddies that, when carved or backlit this way or that, can easily be adapted for Halloween and trick-or-treat fun with students in the classroom or at home. If you are looking for activities you can do with your students, for science-minded conversation starters for the car ride home, or for homeroom discussions before and after Halloween, consider the science activities and science connections highlighted in these posts on the Science Buddies Blog:

Candy Chromatography: one way to use some of the candy loot from the big night!

Glow-in-the-dark Chemistry: what's going on, chemically, in a run-of-the-mill glow stick?

Sounds Like Halloween: conduct a scientific exploration of your scary, eerie, and ghoul-inspired Halloween music playlist!

Vampire Bats and a Bat Detector: are their bats in your neighborhood? With the right tool, you can listen in on the ultrasonic signals.

Biodiversity at Halloween: A Spider Variety Show: spiders fit right in with Halloween's darker side. What spiders are in your area?

Good Hand Washing? Turn on the Black Light!: how does your family's hand washing technique hold up? Put it to a black light test and let the germs glow!

More Halloween Science: more ideas for using up, breaking down, or counting out the excess candy.

A Ghoulish Tradition on the Blog

This year, we've added a few new Halloween-inspired posts to our collection to highlight new hands-on science projects from our library of Project Ideas. If you missed these posts in recent weeks, be sure and add them to your reading list for great Halloween-infused science suggestions:

Science Projects that Double as Halloween Costumes: suggestions for science projects that do double duty as Halloween costumes, including cool wearable electronics!

Saved by the Clot: Halloween's emphasis (for some) on blood and gore makes October a great time to explore a sticky topic—blood coagulation!

A Trick of the Eye for Halloween: what happens when you stare too long at a ghost? You might keep seeing it even after you look away!

Electronics and Play Dough: Fun, Tactile Family Science: Halloween-inspired creativity and introductory electronics with circuits, LEDs, and homemade dough.

Slime, Catapults, and Halloween Science: experiment with polymers and colloids to create Halloween slime, or turn the Ping Pong Catapult into a candy or themed ping pong ball launcher as you explore the physics behind a successful catapult.

Spilling Candy: Weekly Science Project Idea and Home Science Activity Spotlight: which of the candies from trick-or-treat night can "flow" like water and why?