This is the CHaOS demonstrator website, mainly intended for our student volunteers. Click here if you were looking for our main front page.
CHaOS Experiment Explanations
CHaOS has a large collection of different experiments that we use at our events,as listed below. The links take you to experiment explanations aimed at explaining experiments to new CHaOS demonstrators (typically Cambridge science students), as well as risk assessments.
You can filter experiments by subject. There is significant overlap between subjects, many engineering experiments could easily be classified as physics, medical experiments as biology...
| Title | Intro | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| Air Rockets | Launching lemonade bottle air rockets along a rope | Physics |
| Air Streams | Balancing balls on upward streams of air, and looking at aerodynamics. | Physics |
| Animal skulls | Looking at different animal skulls to compare them and see how they differ. | Biology |
| Anti-bubbles | Make fascinating bubbles which rather than floating on water actually sink. | Physics |
| Arch Bridge | Building an arch bridge, and then walking over it. | Engineering |
| Articulated Knee Model | A spare plastic skeleton leg, now with added ligaments. | Medicine |
| Blind spot test | A simple test to show that there is a blind spot on the retina of the eye | Medicine |
| Bouncing Balls | Bouncing balls under coffee tables and rolling them into walls to show some strange effects. | Physics |
| Brain Model | Anatomical model of the brain. | Medicine |
| Breaking Paper | Stretch pieces of paper to demonstrate just how strong paper is under tension. | Engineering |
| Camera obscura and lenses | Peering at the outside world through a lens. | Physics |
| Cantilever Bridges | Building a series of cantilever bridges | Engineering |
| Cathedral | How can we use arches to hold up a cathedral? | Engineering |
| Cleaning Coppers | Removing copper oxides from coins. | Chemistry |
| Cloud Formation in a Bottle | Demonstrate cloud formation as air pressure drops. | Physics |
| Cornflour | Explore the remarkable properties of cornflour mixed with water. | Chemistry |
| Cornflour monster | Make cornflour dance on a speaker | Physics |
| Creepy Crawlies | Looking at a variety of small creatures that you can find in your garden | Biology |
| Dinosaurs and their Ocean Friends | A collection of Mesozoic vertebrate fossils | Other |
| Dissecting sheep's eyeballs | Dissecting a sheep's eyeball to show the structure of the eye | Medicine |
| Drosophila | This experiment aims to introduce kids to a wonderful model organism, the Drosophila fruit fly. | Biology |
| Ear model | Anatomical model of the ear, with removable parts. | Medicine |
| Ear switching hat | This magical hat will confuse your senses! | Medicine |
| Electrolysis | Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, and using the recombination of these to launch ping-pong balls. | Chemistry |
| Electromagnetism | Making electricity, and using it to spin a motor. | Physics |
| Exercise and Heart rate | When you exercise your heart beats faster! | Medicine |
| Exploring genes | Props to explain DNA and molecular biology, including a plastic DNA gel! | Biology |
| Eye Model | Anatomical model of an eye with removable parts to show the structures inside. | Medicine |
| Fire Extinguishers | Demonstrating the power of a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher. | Chemistry |
| Giant bubbles | Making giant soap bubbles and looking at how they behave in different shaped frames. | Chemistry |
| Giant intestine model | Functional model of the intestine | Medicine |
| Hand Model | Large working model of a hand and forearm, with all the tendons to show how a hand works. | Medicine |
| Heart Model | Anatomical model of the heart to show how the heart works. | Medicine |
| Horrible Housemates | Jars of all sorts of horrible house pests: bugs, flies, worms and more! | Biology |
| Hot Air Balloons | Making hot air balloons with plastic bags and a toaster. | Physics |
| Jaw model | Anatomical model of the half jaw, parts can be removed to show structure of the teeth. | Medicine |
| Kiwi DNA | Breaking open cells of a kiwi fruit and making the DNA inside visible to the human eye | Biology |
| Larynx model | Functional model of the larynx | Medicine |
| Life cycles | Jars of specmens of frogs, bees and butterflies from different lifecycle stages | Biology |
| Locusts and Glowsticks | Using glow sticks to talk about chemical kinetics. | Chemistry |
| Lung Model | Working model of the lungs with diaphragm and rib cage. | Medicine |
| Mechanical advantage | Using pulleys and levers to explore mechanical advantage | Engineering |
| Microbes: bacteria | Cuddly bugs, props from a lab, and a hand-washing experiment | Biology |
| Microbes: parasites | Two boxes of kit to explain microbiology | Biology |
| Microbes: viruses | Cuddly viruses and a few models too | Biology |
| Microscopes & Cells | Examining a variety of objects under a microscope, including a variety of slides | Biology |
| Mini Explosions | Exploding film canisters with lemon juice and bicarb. | Chemistry |
| Mini-beasts | A variety of sea life and freshwater animals observed using microscopes | Biology |
| Model cells | Box of model cells | Biology |
| Organ Vest | A velcro apron with detachable 3D organs, to show what's inside your body. | Medicine |
| Peak flow | Using a peak flow meter to measure peak flow rates | Medicine |
| Pipe-cleaner neurones | Making model neurones from coloured pipe cleaners! | Biology |
| Plant evolution & pollinator game | Plant evolution timeline and matching plants with their pollinators | Biology |
| Plants | Plants - looking at germination, their structure and how they produce energy by photosynthesis | Biology |
| Polarisation | Discover how polaroid filters block light as you turn them round | Physics |
| Pond Life | A selection of organisms from a local pond or rock pool | Biology |
| Psychedelic Milk | See the amazing patterns made by food colouring and detergent in milk. | Chemistry |
| Red cabbage | Making a natural pH indicator. | Chemistry |
| Resonance | What is the link between earthquakes and cello strings? | Physics |
| Reversible Flow | Turn syrup one way, then the other, and see that it gets back where it started. | Physics |
| Rocks and fossils | A box of rocks and fossils | Other |
| Rod Climbing | A polyacrylamide solution, which "climbs up" a rod when it is rotated in the solution | Chemistry |
| Rolling Down Hills | Racing jam jars down a gentle slope, to see how filling them affects the speed. | Physics |
| Seeing Sound | Use an oscilloscope and slinky spring to see how sound travels | Physics |
| Slug Bubbles | Does a tube of water drain more slowly with a bung in the top? | Physics |
| Sodium Acetate | Rapid crystal growth from sodium acetate. | Chemistry |
| Sounds from an oven shelf | Get very strange sounds from an oven shelf. | Physics |
| Spinning Chair | Use a freely spinning chair, some masses and a bicycle wheel to see some unintuitive physics. | Physics |
| Spinning Eggs | How to test if an egg is uncooked or hard boiled. | Physics |
| Stethoscopes | Using a stethoscope to listen to the heart and find out how it works. | Medicine |
| Strange Temperatures and roughnesses | A variety of experiments to show how our senses are relative rather than absolute: | Medicine |
| Sunset Model | Why is the sky blue and the sunset red? | Physics |
| Surface Tension | Showing that surface tension can support paperclips. | Physics |
| Suspension Bridge | A suspension bridge made from rope and wood that children can walk across. | Engineering |
| Sweet chromatography | Using chromatography to investigate the colour of food. | Chemistry |
| Tendon Hammer | Using a tendon hammer to show and explain some strange reflexes | Medicine |
| Thixotropic sand and fluidised bed | Looking at floating and sinking using a bed of sand | Chemistry |
| Trebuchets | Using a medieval inspired siege-weapon to launch bean bag bunnies | Engineering |
| Tree | Biology | |
| UV (Fluorescence) | Looking at how materials fluoresce in UV light. | Physics |
| Vacuum Bazooka | Firing a projectile using a vacuum cleaner and a long tube. | Physics |
| Vegetable oil and pyrex | Using the refractive index of vegetable oil to make a glass bowl 'disappear'. | Physics |
| Water Fibre Optics | Constraining light in a stream of water, making it work like an optical fibre. | Physics |
| Water rockets | Launching lemonade bottle water rockets with a foot pump. | Physics |
| X Rays | A collection of x-rays and other forms of medical diagnostic imagery. | Medicine |
| Xylem | Showing one of the transport systems in plants. | Biology |
| Yeast & bread making | The idea is to look at how yeast grows and how it relates to bread making. It involves getting the kids to make bread dough. | Biology |
