Guided virtual science experiments for Grades 6–10. Free experiments need no account.
30 experiments found
Living things carry out all the life processes; a thing that shows only one or two, like fire or a car, is not alive
Check things for the signs of life (moving, breathing, sensing, growing, reproducing, excreting and needing food) and sort them into living, once living and never alive.
Roots grow best in loose soil that holds some water and lets air in; too little or too much water slows them
Grow maize seedlings in clear pots of sandy, loamy and clay soil with different amounts of water, and measure the roots.
A seed contains a tiny plant (embryo) with a food store, protected by a seed coat; beans store food in two cotyledons, maize in its endosperm
Soak a bean seed and a maize grain, open them up, and label the seed coat, hilum, micropyle, cotyledons, plumule, radicle and endosperm.
A leaf has a stalk (petiole) and a flat blade (lamina) supported by a midrib and veins, with an edge (margin) and a tip (apex)
Examine a leaf with a magnifying glass and label its petiole, lamina, midrib, veins, margin and apex.
Microorganisms are too small to see without a microscope; the main groups are bacteria, fungi, protozoa, algae and viruses, and some are useful while others cause disease
Look at prepared slides and microscope images of tiny living things, find out whether they are useful or harmful, and sort them into bacteria, fungi, protozoa, algae and viruses.
Leaves with a network of veins (reticulate) usually belong to plants with tap roots; leaves with parallel veins usually belong to plants with fibrous roots
Look closely at the veins in leaves from common Nepali plants, check their roots too, and sort them into reticulate and parallel venation.
Each part of a flowering plant has a job: roots take in water, the stem carries it, leaves make food, flowers make seeds, and fruits protect and spread them
Label the root, stem, leaf, flower, bud and fruit on a flowering plant, and find out the job each part does.
Seeds need water, warmth and oxygen (air) to germinate; light is not needed until the seedling grows
Set up dishes of bean seeds with and without water, warmth, air and light, and count how many germinate each day.
Water travels up the stem in xylem tubes, pulled by water evaporating from the leaves
Stand celery stalks in red-dyed water, with and without leaves, in a warm sunny place and a cool shady one, and track how high the dye climbs.
Plants use light energy to make glucose from carbon dioxide and water, giving off oxygen; light, carbon dioxide and temperature can each limit the rate
Shine a lamp on pondweed and count the oxygen bubbles. Change the light distance, the light colour, the carbon dioxide and the temperature to find what limits photosynthesis.
Plant and animal cells both have a nucleus, cytoplasm, cell membrane and mitochondria; only plant cells have a cell wall, chloroplasts and a large central vacuole
Label the parts of a plant cell and an animal cell, find out what each part does, and discover which parts only plant cells have.
Stomata are tiny pores, mostly on the underside of leaves, opened and closed by a pair of guard cells to let gases in and out and control water loss
Look at a peel from the underside of a leaf under the microscope and label the epidermal cells, guard cells, chloroplasts and open and closed stomata.
Plants lose water vapour through stomata in their leaves; it is faster in warm, bright, windy and dry conditions
Stand a leafy shoot in water under a plastic bag and measure how much water it loses in light and dark, still and windy, dry and humid air, and with its leaves greased.
Organisms have adaptations, special features that help them survive in their habitat
Study the body features of plants and animals, from a yak to a lotus, and match each one to the habitat it is adapted to.
Pollen is carried to the stigma, a pollen tube carries the male gamete to the ovule, and after fertilisation the ovule becomes a seed and the ovary a fruit
Put the stages of pollination, fertilisation, seed and fruit formation and germination in the right order, and find out where in the flower each one happens.
A flower's stamens (anther and filament) are the male parts and its pistil (stigma, style and ovary with ovules) is the female part; petals and sepals attract and protect
Cut a flower in half, label its petals, sepals, stamens and pistil, and find out which parts are male and which are female.
Roots absorb water mainly through their root hairs, by osmosis; salty water stops absorption
Stand young plants in measuring cylinders of water sealed with oil, compare intact roots, damaged root hairs and cut-off roots, and try salty water.
Particles spread from a high concentration to a low concentration by diffusion, faster at higher temperatures
Put a drop of food colouring into still water at different temperatures and measure how far the colour spreads over time.
When the diaphragm moves down, the chest gets bigger, the pressure inside falls and air flows into the lungs
Pull and push the rubber diaphragm of a bell-jar lung model, watch the balloon lungs fill and empty, and see what a hole in the chest does.
Water moves by osmosis through a partially permeable membrane from a dilute solution to a more concentrated one
Soak potato strips in sugar solutions of different strengths, weigh them, and find the strength at which they neither gain nor lose water.
A dicot stem has protective, storage, transport and growing tissues; xylem carries water up and phloem carries food, arranged in a ring of vascular bundles
Look at a stained cross-section of a sunflower stem and label the epidermis, cortex, phloem, cambium, xylem and pith.
Living cells respire, using oxygen and giving out carbon dioxide; respiration is controlled by enzymes and depends on temperature
Use a respirometer to measure the oxygen used by germinating, dry and boiled seeds at different temperatures, and test their gas with limewater.
Humans have a double circulation: the right side of the heart pumps blood to the lungs, and the left side pumps oxygen-rich blood to the body
Follow a drop of blood from the body through the four chambers of the heart, the lungs and back out to the body, checking whether it carries oxygen at each stage.
In mitosis a cell copies its chromosomes and divides into two identical cells; meiosis makes four gametes with half the chromosomes
Look at onion root-tip cells under the microscope, identify each stage of mitosis, put the stages in order, and compare mitosis with meiosis.
DNA is a double helix of two sugar-phosphate backbones joined by base pairs (A with T, G with C); a gene is a stretch of DNA that codes for a trait, and DNA is coiled into chromosomes
Label a model of DNA, from a chromosome down to the bases, discover the base-pairing rules, and see what a gene is.
Enzymes speed up digestion; each works fastest at an optimum temperature and pH and is denatured by high temperatures
Mix starch with the enzyme amylase at different temperatures and pH, and test samples with iodine to see how fast the starch is digested.
Each parent passes on one allele of each gene; a dominant allele hides a recessive one, giving predictable ratios such as 3 : 1
Cross tall and short pea plants with a Punnett square, predict the offspring, and find Mendel's 3 : 1 ratio and the test cross.
Individuals better suited to their environment survive and reproduce more, so their inherited features become more common over generations
Follow a population of light and dark peppered moths over many generations on clean and soot-blackened trees, with and without birds hunting them.
The kidneys filter waste such as urea from the blood to make urine, which flows down the ureters to the bladder and leaves through the urethra
Label the kidneys, ureters, bladder, urethra and the blood vessels of a model of the human urinary system, and follow how urine is made and removed.
In a reflex arc an impulse travels from a receptor along a sensory neuron to the spinal cord, through a relay neuron to a motor neuron and an effector, without waiting for the brain
Follow a nerve impulse from touching a hot pan to pulling your hand away, and put each part of the reflex arc in order.