Make a Water Strider - STEM Activity

Have you ever seen a water strider (also called water bugs, pond skaters, water skippers etc.)? They are bugs that effortlessly hop around on the surface of ponds, lakes, and rivers. How do they do it without sinking? Try this project to find out! Read more

How do water striders skip across the surface of the water? What advantage does this give them over other insects that helps them survive in their environment? Your students will find out in this lesson as they build their own insects from pieces of wire, and see which ones sink and which ones float. Read more

Water striders (also called water bugs, pond skippers, etc.) are insects that can hop around on the surface of water (Figure 1). Unlike boats or other floating objects that are partially submerged and held up by the resulting buoyant force, water striders are held up by surface tension. Figure 1. Water striders (image credit Isaka Yoji). You can build your own water striders using thin wire (Figure 2 and following video). Do some background… Read more

Follow along with a Science Buddies parent who is using family STEM activities to keep her kids learning at home during the COVID-19 school shutdown. New posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Today's adventure... exploring surface tension by making wire water striders. A Spill Leads to Exploring Surface Tension What happens when you put a freshly laundered tablecloth on the table? Well, in my house, it immediately triples the chance that someone… Read more

Join Science Buddies this summer for virtual summer camp! Each week, we'll have a fun STEM theme for kids of all ages, suggestions for simple hands-on activities, book picks, and more. With our Summer of STEM, we'll keep you and your kids inspired all summer with creative and innovative science and engineering activities — for free. This week: make a splash with water play and water-based science experiments! Water Play Science Week 6 focuses on… Read more

Kids can learn more about science and engineering careers and "test-drive" their interest in certain careers by trying one of these science experiments related to popular STEM career paths. Test-drive These Exciting STEM Careers Many kids are interested in popular science and engineering careers they hear about, but do they know what it's really like to go to work in that career? What kinds of tasks, projects, and experiments does someone in that job… Read more

Use these free STEM lessons and activities to teach about animal behavior, animal anatomy, and adaptations as you explore animal science K-12 students. The free STEM lessons and activities below help students learn about animals and animal science, including habitats, adaptations, animal behavior, and other zoology and mammalian biology topics. For key terms to review with students, see the list of vocabulary words at the bottom of this resource. For… Read more

Use these free science lessons, experiments, and activities to teach K-12 students about density. Sometimes students wrongly think that an object's density is the same as its weight or its mass. Instead, density refers to an object's mass in a given volume. Two objects that have the same shape and size (volume) but have a different mass (like two same-sized balls with different weights) have different densities. As a physical property of… Read more