Part 17 of 26
Science Lab
Science Lab, under Math Lab in the menu, has fifty-six investigations in 3D, in four topics: Life science, Physical science, Chemistry and Earth & space.
For Grades 3 to 5 they cover how things work: plants and food webs, habitats, the human body and tiny living things; matter, forces, magnets, machines, heat, light, sound and circuits; the water cycle, rocks, weather, volcanoes and earthquakes, and the Sun, Earth and Moon. For Grades 6 to 8 they open the invisible world: inside a cell, DNA and chromosomes, mitosis and meiosis, genes and traits, predators and prey, natural selection, germs and the immune system, and organ systems working together; in chemistry, inside an atom, the periodic table, chemical bonds, reactions and balancing, acids, bases and pH, and mixtures and solutions; in physics, velocity and acceleration, Newton’s laws and momentum, waves, and electricity and magnetism; and in Earth science, plate tectonics, weather systems, the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle, and ocean currents.
Doing a lab
- Pick a lab from the list. Tap a topic to open it, and the others fold away. Type in Find a lab to search, or press 3–5 or 6–8 to see only the labs for those grades. Each lab says which grades it suits. On a phone the list folds into a bar above the lab.
- Answer the question at the top and press Lock in my guess. The 3D scene opens only after a guess, because a child who has committed to an idea watches for it.
- Explore. Drag the scene to turn it, or use Turn left, Turn right, Closer and Farther. Run time with Play, or move the sliders to set the day, the speed or the place. The numbers beside the scene say in words what it shows.
- Full screen, above the scene, fills the window with it, like a video;Exit full screen or the Escape key brings the page back.
- Press I have explored. What did I find? and answer. Another answer gets a pointer back at the scene; the right one names the idea, then shows your child’s first guess beside it and the common wrong idea about it.
What it does not do
Distances and sizes are squeezed to fit on a screen, and each lab says where. Everything is worked out on your device, so nothing your child does here is sent anywhere. It is free, with no sign-in.