Home Chemistry Demonstrations

You can perform chemistry demonstrations even if you don't have access to a chemistry lab. These home chemistry demonstrations use common household materials and chemicals.

Making a baking soda and vinegar volcano is safe and easy, plus it only requires a few inexpensive kitchen ingredients. Here are detailed instructions for making a volcano, plus a look at the chemical reactions involved.

Use static electricity to bend a stream of flowing water. This is an easy science activity that illustrates how opposite electrical charges attract each other.

Bismuth is one of the easiest and prettiest metal crystals that you can grow yourself. The crystals have an interesting geometric hopper shape and are rainbow-colored from the oxide layer that quickly forms on them. Try these step-by-step instructions for growing bismuth crystals.

You can make black snake or glow worm fireworks yourself, safely and easily.

It's very easy to make blue fire. Here are a few of the ways you can make blue fire yourself.

Bubbles are fun no matter what, but bubbles you can burn just has that added extra appeal. Here's an easy science project you can do that proves propellants in common products are flammable and allows you to burn some bubbles.

Make your own pH indicator solution! Red cabbage juice indicator is easy to make, exhibits a wide range of colors, and can be used to make your own pH paper strips.

You can use chalk and alcohol to perfom chromatography to separate the pigments in food colorings or inks. After you've finished making your chromatogram, you'll have colored chalk.

Here's a quick and easy science project you can do: make a cloud inside a bottle. This simple project uses water vapor and smoke from a match to help form a cloud.

You can spritz a flame with chemicals to change the color of the fire. Colored fire spray bottles are easy to prepare and use common chemicals.

Make a liquid layers density column with as many as seven layers using common household liquids. This is an easy, fun and colorful science project that illustrates the concepts of density and miscibility.

Place a ketchup packet in a bottle of water and make it rise and fall at your command, as if by magic. Of course, the magic involves some basic science. Here's how to do the diving ketchup trick and how it works.

You can use sublimating dry ice to produce carbon dioxide gas to fill bubbles. A small piece of dry ice will produce cloudy bubbles for a long time. Here's what you do.

You can use duck tape to see an example of triboluminescence, the glow given off when some materials are subjected to mechanical stress or friction. The duck tape triboluminescence project is extremely easy and only take a few seconds to try.

You don't see air and might not think much of it is contained in a bottle, but air and the pressure it exerts can be very powerful. The egg in a bottle demonstration illustrates the concept of air pressure.

A fire tornado forms when fire is caught up in a vortex. Fire tornadoes or fire devils occur naturally in some wildfires, but you can make a small scale fire tornado yourself. Here's how!

If you can find a tee shirt and some lighter fluid, you can make small fireballs. These fireballs are re-useable. Theoretically, you can hold them in your hand.

Firebreathing involves breathing a fine mist of fuel over an open flame to form a fireball. It's the most stunning fire trick and potentially the most risky since most firebreathing involves using a flammable, toxic fuel. Here are instructions for a safer form of firebreathing, using a non-flammable, non-toxic fuel that you have in your kitchen.

Red cabbage juice contains a natural pH indicator that changes color from purple to green under basic (alkaline) conditions. You can use this reaction to make a fried green egg.

A Halloween jack-o-lantern filled with green fire is much more impressive than one lit with the usual candle. Here's how to produce this easy effect yourself.

It's easy to make brilliant green fire. This cool chemistry project only takes two household chemicals.

Sodium acetate or hot ice is an amazing chemical you can prepare yourself from baking soda and vinegar. You can cool a solution of sodium acetate below its melting point and then cause the liquid to crystallize. The crystallization is an exothermic process, so the resulting ice is hot. Solidification occurs so quickly you can form sculptures as you pour the hot ice.

Make a tasty treat and learn about freezing point depression, too! All you need are some basic ingredients and two ziploc baggies. It's easy, fun, and educational.

Make your own invisible ink so you can write and reveal secret messages. Get information about inks that are activated by heat, chemical reactions, and ultraviolet light.

The elephant toothpaste demo produces a growing column of foam that looks like what you would get if an elephant squashed a giant tube of toothpaste. Here's a kid-friendly version of this classic chemistry demonstration.

If you add food coloring to milk, not a whole lot happens, but it only takes one simple ingredient to turn the milk into a spinning color wheel. Here is what you do.

The pepper and water science trick is one of the easiest magic tricks you can perform. Here's how to do the trick and an explanation of how it works.

Make a rainbow in a glass using colored sugar solutions with different densities. This project is very easy and safe enough to drink.

Make beautiful paper from recycled scraps of just about any paper project you can find. Learn how to add decorative items to your paper and prepare it for writing or stamping. This is a fun craft that teaches about recycling while making a useful handmade product.

Learn how to make your own pH indicator test strips using red cabbage. This is a fun, safe, and easy chemistry project that you can do at home.

You can make a hard boiled egg bounce like a rubber ball and cause chicken bones to become soft and rubbery. All you need is a common kitchen ingredient.

You can create a pattern resembling tie-dye using colored Sharpie pens and rubbing alcohol. It's a fun and educational project that is great for kids.

You can easily make a smoke bomb using inexpensive materials to produce safe smoke.

You can make a smoke ring cannon that shoots smoke rings in the air or even in water. A smoke ring cannon is a simple science project that uses easy-to-find household materials to illustrate fluid vortex formation in a fun way.

Stink bombs smell terrible, but they are also fun. Here are instructions for how to use everyday materials to make your own stink bombs.

You can cool water below its stated freezing point and then crystallize it into ice on command. This is known as supercooling. These are step-by-step instructions for supercooling water at home.

It's very simple to make violet or purple fire. All you need are two easy-to-find ingredients.

Here's how to make a safe and easy chemical volcano using two common inexpensive household ingredients.

Dissolving Styrofoam or another polystyrene product in acetone is a spectacular demonstration of the solubility of this plastic in an organic solvent, plus it illustrates just how much air is in the Styrofoam.