Lessons

Read a gene three letters at a time, then change one and watch what it costs.

Read three seismograms, draw three circles, and find the quake yourself.

Drop a hundred balls through a board of pegs and watch them pile into the same shape every time.

Slow the sampler down until a high note comes back as a low one.

Choose who survives, run the generations, and find out why it never reaches zero.

Set a planet's distance and colour, work out its temperature, then add air.

Pick two parents, fill the square, and read off exactly how likely each child is.

Drag a magnet, map its field lines, and measure how fast the field fades.

Move the Moon around Earth and watch its shape change. Learn to tell waxing from waning.

Add protons, neutrons and electrons and watch the element change.

Mass vs. weight, and why gravity gets weaker with distance.

Put all 118 elements where they belong on the table.

Sort everyday changes and find out which ones make something new.

Put numbers in front until every atom is accounted for, then find out which ingredient runs out first.

Watch a boxful of atoms decay at random and trace the half-life curve as they go.

Drag sources, barriers and a Geiger counter around a bench and find what really stops each kind.

Heat a kilogram of ice until it is steam, and watch the molecules and the heating curve as it goes.

Work through lab scenarios and see what happens when safety slips.

Mix colored light, split white light with a prism, and find out why the sky is blue.

Squeeze the air and watch it travel, then send a siren past and hear the note drop.

Wire up a battery and bulbs, and find out why two in a row are both dim.

Flip two switches, wire three gates together, then build the circuit that adds.

Flip eight switches and watch them become a number, a letter and a colour.

Check a formula without solving it, and work out a law from the units alone.

Measure one bolt four ways and watch how many digits you are allowed to write.

Match famous discoveries and everyday experiments to each step of the scientific method, from observation to communication.

Examine rock samples and sort them into igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.

Build a plate boundary, run millions of years, then clock the Pacific plate from the Hawaiian islands.

Tilt the Earth and see why summer happens. Hint: it isn't the distance from the Sun.

See how the Moon and Sun pull the oceans into high and low tides.

See the order of the planets, then convert Earth days into each planet's own day and year.

How far is an AU? A light-year? Learn how astronomers measure distances in space.

Knock an electron up a rung and watch the photon it gives out on the way back down.

Read a spectrum like an astronomer and tell which elements are in a star.

Fusion, the H–R diagram, and how a star's mass decides how it lives and dies.

Turn the mass dial and watch the horizon grow, then aim light past it and find where it orbits for ever.

Catch a planet crossing its star, read its size off the dip and its year off the gap, then watch the star wobble.

Line up the Sun, Earth and Moon, tilt the orbit, and watch both shadows land, to scale.

Stretch an orbit, watch the planet sweep equal areas, and put all eight planets on one line.

Fire a cannonball sideways, faster each time, until it falls all the way round the Earth.

Shape a galaxy on Hubble's tuning fork, then watch space stretch and read the age of the universe off one line.

Spin the Milky Way with only what we can see, then add an invisible halo until it turns the way Gaia measures.

How friction fights motion, static vs. kinetic friction, and why surfaces matter.

Set a car's starting speed and its push, then watch the dots spread out and the graph climb.

Drag the hills, let the car go, and watch height turn into speed while the total stays the same.

Stretch rubber bands, fire a ball straight up, and see how much of each bounce it keeps.

Balance a seesaw, push a crate up a ramp and rig a pulley: every one trades force for distance.

Crash two vehicles and watch momentum survive while the kinetic energy does not.

Draw a shape, put it in a wind tunnel, and measure its drag and lift.

Day, year and tilt; the Moon's two different months; and why eclipses are rare.