Earth Science Experiments

Groundwater Flow

Create models of what is below the Earth’s surface to observe the flow of groundwater.

Porosity and Permeability in Petroleum Reservoirs

Compare the porosity and permeability of sand and gravel. Which makes a better petroleum reservoir?

Start Your Own Water Project

You can learn more about the quality of your local water, by following our step-by-step guide on how to begin your own water project.

The Greenhouse Effect: Warming the Earth

Demonstrate how the greenhouse effect warms the Earth…

Water and Solubility

Learn more about water’s role in dissolving some common substances—solubility—and how temperature changes affect this ability.

How Is Natural Gas Formed?

Observe how decay produces gas using rotting greens in a plastic bag to mimic plant and animal debris buried under sediments. 

Exploring for Petroleum: What's Down There?

Test your skills at mapping underground  rock layers. Small models let you try different core techniques on rock layer models.  

Drinking Water from the Sea

Learn a technique to turn salt water to fresh water by using items found in your kitchen.  

Make a portable seismograph to measure how much movement occurs when you shake a table.  

How Round Is The Earth?

Collaborate with students and teachers around the world to measure the Earth's circumference. 

Oil Well Blowout Simulator

Blowouts are one of the major risks of drilling for oil. Learn how a blowout occurs and how it can be prevented with this demonstration. 

The Absorbency of Rock

By doing this simple experiment, which requires only a scale, water, and a porous rock, it's easy to demonstrate that solid rock can absorb water.

Build a Buckyball

Make a paper model of a fullerene, or buckyball, one of the newer forms of carbon atoms. The shape, a truncated icosahedron, is recognizeable as a soccer or football ball. 

The Permeability of Soil

Measure how fast water flows through your soil and into the ground below as you learn about permeability. 

Energy Efficiency

By measuring air and soil temperatures, find out how the temperature of the air affects the temperature of an object in the ground. 

The Brazil Nut Effect

Learn how large sand grains get separated from finer grains to form layers in rock or sand. 

Building the Hele-Shaw Cell

Construct a Hele-Shaw cell to study the behavior of sand and rock grains as they are poured into a confined space. 

How Long Is the Day?

Track the times of sunrise and sunset over a period of weeks or months to observe how the day lengthens or shortens with the season. 

Porosity

Measure the open space, or pores, in beakers of sand, silt, and gravel to figure out which one would make a better rock reservoir for oil. 

CO₂ Absorption 

Raid your kitchen or go to the store for a purple cabbage. You can use the vegetable to demonstrate how water can absorb and store CO2. 

Earthquake Epicenters

Use the interactive globe to plot the locations of all earthquakes, from 1999 to 2003, of magnitude 5 or higher. 

Geologic History of the Earth

Watch the tectonic plates and continents form, break up, and re-form in a geologic history of the Earth from 600 million years ago to 200 million years into the future. 

Granular Mixture Explorer

Use this virtual Hele-Shaw cell game to explore the behavior of various granular mixtures.