A cow eye is very similar to a human eye. What better way to understand how your eye works than to take apart a cow eye? Check this out!

Our Extreme Scientist, Jesse, talks about the chemistry of disappearing inks. She has a little surprise for Chris near the end.

Correlation to Educational Standards  Mindbender Mansion provides connections to science, technology and mathematics content. The primary focus of the exhibition is problem solving, often with a mathematical emphasis. Through exhibit activities, visitors will practice the problem-solving skills that are used to explore the world through scientific inquiry and mathematics. Research has shown that students learn [...]

If you fill a plastic bottle with a small amount of liquid nitrogen, seal the bottle, then let the gas expand, you get an explosion. If you pour 30 gallons or so of plastic balls on top of the bottle before it explodes, you get a Ballplostion! Check it out!

How does an antacid ease the pain of an upset stomach?

With a head of red cabbage you can have lots of fun doing some kitchen chemistry. Red cabbage has a natural acid/base indicator that you can extract and test all sort of things to see if they are an acid or base.

Hot air makes these metal pipes howl with noise.

A rocket powered by the combustion of ethyl alcohol. In the end it’s all about action and reaction and rocket nozzle design.

What happens when you torch a towel soaked in a flammable liquid? This result may surprise you.

Using liquid nitrogen, which boils at -320 degrees, we make a batch of tasty ice cream in less than 2 minutes.

Get an upclose look at a set of lungs and the heart from a pig. The inflated lungs are amazing!

A steel pipe filled with propane gas can demonstrate some interesting properties of sound.

A hovercraft is pretty simple in construction. A circle of plywood, at plastic tarp, a coffee can lid and a leaf blower. Check out the video for more information.

A tremendous amount of energy is released when you allow hydrogen and oxygen gas to combine to form water. Check out this demonstration.

We are celebrating Chemistry Week with all sorts of activities you need to check out!

The self carving pumpkin is featured in our special Spooky Science demonstration this weekend as we get geared up for Halloween.

Halloween is just around the corner and making a batch of edible blood is a great way to spend the day in your kitchen with the kids. If you’re gearing up for Halloween and are in need of some fake blood, there is no reason to go out and pay a lot of money for [...]

Using the seaweed extract, sodium alginate, and a solution of salty water you can create something that looks like worms in seconds. Normally alginate is used as a food thickener for things like jellies, jams and pie fillings. That doesn’t mean you can’t play with it to make noodle-like “worms”  and tiny spheres that look like [...]

During the month of October visitors will be able to dissect an actual cow eye in the science studio at Imagination Station. This is an amazing experience that you have to check out. Learn more in the video below or in this recent Toledo Blade article about our Spooky Science event.

Camp-In is an overnight program designed to inspire boys and girls in grades 2nd-7th and their accompanying adults to discover science in an entertaining, educational and interactive overnight adventure.  Imagination Station invites you to enter the wonderfully puzzling world of Mindbender Mansion, an eclectic place full of puzzles, brainteasers and interactive challenges guaranteed to test [...]

Thursday, September 29 3:30-5:00pm Come to the Educator’s Open House and see first-hand why Imagination Station, filled with over 250 interactive experiences, is a useful tool to help teach much needed science concepts and 21st century skills. Explore BODIES REVEALED. Free for teachers at the Open House!* Find out how Imagination Station can bring exciting, engaging [...]

January 10-15, 2012 Attention Parents and Preschool & Kindergarten Teachers! Mark your calendars for Little Scientists Week!  This special “Sid the Science Kid” themed week is dedicated to our littlest scientists, kindergarten age and younger! Watch your students come to life as they journal their way into discovering the scientist inside with special hands-on inquiry-based [...]

Magnesium metal is used in some fireworks to create brilliant white sparks. Those sparks are created as the metal reacts with oxygen in the air. While carbon dioxide is generally used to put out fires, it turns out that magnesium can also react with carbon dioxide to produce a brilliant flame.

It’s the classic summer experiment – mentos candies dropped into a 2 liter bottle of cola.

Oobleck is a suspension of cornstarch and water that can behave like a solid or a liquid depending on how much pressure you apply. It’s very easy to make at home or in a classroom – it can be a bit messy.

How do they get the colors in fireworks? They add various metals to the combustible materials.

Not only do get WTVG meteorologist Jay Berschback to lay on a bed of nails, we also smash a cinder block on top of him. Check it out.

Using just air pressure – not compressed air – you can accelerate a ping pong ball to amazing speeds. Fast enough to rip through a soda can.

What would it feel like to put your body (not your head!) inside a big bag and then remove all the air?

How do you get disappearing ink to fade as fast as possible? You saturate it with carbon dioxide from a fire extinguisher…

Soap bubbles filled with an explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen are ignited in Jay’s bare hands!

Is there a better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than to freeze some flowers in liquid nitrogen? Probably, but flash freezing flowers and then watching them break like glass is pretty cool.

Making an Air Cannon is super easy and you probably have everything you need at home or in the garage right now. Learn how it’s done.

Fill an egg with hydrogen gas, bring a match near-by and see what happens.

When you combine a steel tube filled with a flammable gas and sound waves you can create a pretty cool display of the sound pressure inside the tube.

Naked Egg – An egg that has had it’s outer hard shell removed but yet remains intact.

Ripping a pop can in half with your bare hands is not all that hard if you know a bit of chemistry and a little about how soda cans are fabricated. Watch as ABC13′s Christina Williams rips pop cans apart in this Imagine It! Segment.

It’s March Madness and we are getting crazy ourselves by dunking a basketball in super cold liquid nitrogen. What happens when you cool a basketball down to 320 degrees below zero? Watch the video to find out.

Can you balance an egg only on the vernal equinox? Of course not! you can balance an egg on its end any day of the year. Check out what else you can do with a few eggs at home.

Amazing Milk is a fun “play with your food” moment. Milk is full of tiny clumps of fat. If you add a dash of dish detergent and some food coloring to a plate of milk something interesting starts to happen.

What would grow in a petri dish if we swabbed a sample from your phone or computer keyboard? Watch to find out and learn a simple at home experiment you can do as well.

As part of Engineering Week 2011, we challenge local meteorologist Jay Berschback to build a stable tower on our Earthquake Platform exhibit using only foam noodles and a handful of cross-bracing. Find out if he can do it.

Acid-base indicators provide a great platform for a variety of at home chemistry experiments that anyone can do. One of the simplest indicators that is readily available is red cabbage. It turns out that the colored pigment that gives the cabbage it color is a natural acid-base indicator. The red color of cabbage comes from [...]

Find out what kinds of glass auto engineers use for the windshield and side windows of your car – and how they break.

What happens if you take away all the air pressure from the outside of a marshmallow by placing in inside a vacuum chamber? Watch the video to find out.

We use our eyes to view our world. A thermal imaging camera can show us things our eyes cannot see. There is so much more to what we call “light”, every thing from gamma rays to radio waves.

There are tiny iron fillings in your iron fortified cereal? Yep, many cereal manufacturers add elemental iron, the kind you would find in a nail, train or car, in your breakfast cereal. It turns out that this form of iron is ideal for a cereal additive.

2011 Pedometer Challenge Attention Teachers: We’re asking your class to participate in a pedometer challenge, by walking to Cape Canaveral, Florida. That’s just 1,112 miles (or for a classroom of 25 students, that’s only 44.5 miles each.) Please have your students track how far they walk each day using the pedometer provided to them and [...]

Our newest Learning World, Engineer It!, is now open. This 5,000 square foot space features 25 new exhibits about engineering in three topics areas: Wind, Water and Structures.

Sloan combines history and science when talking about the origin of the modern breathalyzer – the Drunk-o-meter.

Fatiguing the visual processing system in your brain may not sound like all that much fun, but you should give it a try. Don’t worry, your brain will recover! The Trizonal Space Warper is capable of producing some pretty interesting visual effects.

What happens if you put some liquid nitrogen that is boiling at 320 degrees below zero inside a sealed two liter bottle? A very loud explosion and a shredded bottle!

Looking for something to do as a family that’s fun and engaging? Introduce your family to engineering through these hands-on workshops. Our two-hour programs focus on the engineering design process and encourage your family to meet our engineering challenges together!

2012 Summer Camps For ages 7-12 (2nd-7th grade – in the fall) Campers Receive: Daily instruction, 9am-4:30pm Take home activities Camp t-shirt 2 snacks daily Simulator theater ride Extended care available from 8am-5:30pm at no additional cost Jump into the fun! While it’s steamy and HOT outside, we’ve got fun-filled, weeklong summer camps loaded with [...]

Food calories are a measure of how much energy is contained in the food item. A very graphic way to visualize how much energy is in a handful of food is to burn it and observer the flame. We try this with a handful of cheesepuffs and Total cereal using liquid oxygen as an oxidizer.

This week Sloan and Jay create a couple of foam volcanoes using a solution of concentrated hydrogen peroxide and some dish soap. Using super concentrated solutions allows the reaction to happen so fast that the foam literally hits the ceiling in our demonstration theater. Check out the video and learn about an at home version.

Making ice cream at home is actually pretty easy to do and you don’t need any fancy equipment if you’re just making small batches for fun. This is a great Saturday afternoon activity. You’ll be surprised at how good it actually tastes. Just keep in mind this is not low-fat low-calorie.

Methane is a flammable gas that is lighter than air. Often fire fighter have to worry about not only flames that come from the ground, but also dangerous flammable vapors that are lighter than air.

Take a trip back to the 1970′s and make your very own lava lamp using just stuff you have around the house. It’s mesmerizing…

Oobleck is a suspension of cornstarch and water that can behave like a solid or a liquid depending on how much pressure you apply. Try to grab some in your hand and it will form a solid ball in your palm just until you release the pressure, then it will flow out between your fingers. Materials that behave this way are classified as non-Newtonian liquids because their flow properties are not described by a constant viscosity.

Did you eat a few to many chips loaded with a spicy dip? Perhaps just to much during the Game (Ohio vs. Michigan) and are in need of a bit of antacid relief? Check out this video to see just how an antacid works to reduce the acid level in your stomach. One thing I forgot to mention is that Milk of Magnesia is also a laxative … so with all meds read the label before consuming…!

While it looks like Sloan is changing water into wine, what’s really taking place is a chemical clock reaction. Two reactions take place at the same time – reaction number one is trying to create a dark liquid, reaction number two is consuming a chemical needed to turn the liquid dark. After a few seconds the second reaction runs out and the liquid turns an inky black.

Project Energy Project Energy is a partnership with Toledo Public Schools and Lourdes College and offers teachers an opportunity to implement project-based learning in the classroom with an energy theme.

A little alcohol in a 5 gallon water jug will combust in an interesting way when a flame is dropped inside.

Super absorbers were developed in the 1960′s by the Department of Agriculture as a product to spread over crops to even out the drench-drought cycle. This class of polymers is capable of absorbing up to 400 times their weight in water. This amazing ability to hold liquids in a gel eventually led to their use in baby diapers, plant soil, grass seed and those fun “grow creatures” toys that swell in water.

What happens if you tilt a room’s floor at 25 degrees, but keep the rest of the room (door frames, windows, etc) at the correct perspective? We call it distorted gravity – or maybe that is more what it feels like. Your eyes and ears get conflicting signals and that can lead to only one thing – a queasy stomach. It’ something you just have to experience in person to fully appreciate.

Crime Scene Science Gizmo’s gone missing! Camp-in is an overnight program designed to inspire boys and girls, grades 2-6, to discover science in an entertaining, educational and interactive way. The program offers single gender and co-ed nights, one night a year for girls in grades 7-12, and one night for families. This program includes hands-on [...]

Evening Activities 5:30-6:30pm Check-In! During this time campers will store their gear and are able to begin exploring Imagination Stations exhibit areas until the Welcome Show. The leaders and participants will receive

Taylor Automotive Group has awarded Imagination Station a $50,000 sponsorship that provides an exciting opportunity for every 5th grade student at Toledo Public Schools.

What would happen if you created a chemical reaction inside a carved pumpkin that generates a whole lot of foam? Watch the video to find out. Question is, what reaction would you choose? We thought it would be fun to use a 35% solution of hydrogen peroxide (that’s more than 10 times more concentrated than what you have at home) and some soap to catch the oxygen gas that is generated.

Solid carbon dioxide is often called dry ice because at normal atmospheric pressure it never forms a liquid state. Instead of changing from a solid to a liquid and then to a gas, it jumps right from solid to gas. This is called sublimation. Dry ice is very cold, around 109 degrees below zero on the Fahrenheit scale. That’s cold enough to freeze flesh and cause frostbite which it why we always wear gloves when handling this stuff.

Sodium Alginate is derived from seaweed and is used as a gelling agent in many foods. We think it’s just fun to play with! When you add the alginate solution to a calcium chloride salt solution it turns into a jell nearly instantly. If you are careful you can make tiny spheres (or caviar balls) if you drip it, but if you squirt a solid stream, it will turn into a “wormy” tube with a solid exterior and a liquid filled interior. Some pretty crazy stuff!

The Boyo is a unique experience – you become much like a yo-yo where you do all the moving. It looks simple enough, you add some energy to the overhead flywheels and then they pull you off the ground a few inches. If you keep adding energy by pulling on the handles, eventually you will be pulled 13 feet off the ground. It takes a bit of practice, so don’t expect to get to the top in one, two or even six pulls.

Who is the targeted audience for Camp-Ins? Overnight Camp-In is primarily for grades 2-6. Scout Councils (Girl Scouts & Boy Scouts) historically have been a major participant in the program.

Flammable liquids can generate invisible vapors that are also flammable. These vapors can be more dangerous than a liquid spill because they are invisible and can travel a distance to an ignition source. Imagine you spill some paint thinner in your basement, as you clean up the liquid, the vapors can move across the floor to a pilot light. As the vapors ignite the flames will flash back to the liquid spill – and you!

Hubble Space Telescope: Glossary of Terms from Hubblesite.org Advanced Camera For Surveys (ACS) An optical camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope that uses CCD detectors to make images. The camera covers twice the area, has twice the sharpness, and is up to 10 times more efficient than the telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. [...]

Jupiter is larger than 1,000 Earths. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a hurricane-like storm system that was first detected in

Hubble’s Name NASA named the world’s first space-based optical telescope after American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble (1889—1953). Dr. Hubble confirmed an “expanding” universe, which provided the foundation for the Big Bang theory.

These ceramic tiles protect the space shuttle as it renters the Earth’s atmosphere at speeds over 17,000 miles per hour. They are capable of withstanding temperatures as high as 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit as the orbiter returns to the surface. A secondary purpose for the tiles is to protect the shuttle from the alternating heat and cold experienced while orbiting the earth. They are amazing insulators!

What can be more fun than spending a day with your troop exploring over 250 hands-on exhibits inside Imagination Station?

Between 6-8pm on Thursday, September 23, 2010, retired NASA engineer Russell Werneth will be attending our Hubble Exhibit Members Night and sharing with members his stories about working directly with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Mark your calendar- To really get a full grasp on what Imagination Station can do to help you and your students reach your classroom goals, we invite you to join us! EDUCATOR OPEN HOUSE Tuesday, September 21st from 4-7pm

This is one of our newest exhibits. You have all seen the footage of a TV meteorologist standing outside in some crazy winds reporting on a severe storm or even a hurricane. This exhibit allows you to safely experience winds up to a category one hurricane. If things feel a bit to extreme for you you can simply step out of the wind blast – something you can’t do in a real hurricane.

Just click on the image of the Guide to download a copy. It’s filled with valuable information about everything we have to offer, both at the science center and within your classroom. The Educator’s Guide includes information on: field trips, outreach programs (Workshops, Distance Learning, Science Festivals and STARLAB Portable Planetarium), standards alignment for both [...]

Welcome back teachers! It’s been a busy summer for us at Imagination Station. In addition to keeping your students and their families engaged and entertained, we’ve hosted 6 weeks of summer camp focused on exploring engineering concepts; spent countless hours giving kids a unique opportunity assisting local artists in constructing a sculpture that now hangs [...]

Slime is one of those easy-to-do, fun activities that never gets old. There is something that everyone loves about making a substance that is gooey and gross. It always reminds me of Halloween and of course, chemistry and polymers.

Saturday, August 28, 2010 H2OOOOOOOh! Rocket Challenge Discover the Engineer within… This exciting science challenge, brought to Imagination Station by The Blade, gives kids of all ages the opportunity to design and build their own rocket. We’ll provide everything that you need (bottles, paper, tape, water, etc), you just need to bring the idea and [...]

Film Canister Rockets are a favorite experiment at Imagination Station. We do them frequently within the Science Studio, a learning world that allows visitors to do hands-on experiments and other activities. One of the best things about this activity is that

Materials: 1 can of Soda 1 can of Diet Soda 1 or 2 Large clear containers (like an aquarium, or large bowls) Water What to do: Add water to the aquarium so that it can cover the soda cans. Place the cans into the water. What the Science: The diet soda and regular soda differ [...]

Learn how to make Dinosaur Toothpaste just as we did on WTOL, on August 7, 2010.

Saturday, August 7, 2010 1:00 – 3:00pm Dr. Scott Sampson, the Paleontologist – Personal Appearance at Imagination Station

June 28, 2010 Imagination Station’s Summer Day Camp kicks off Campers invent, build and explore! Toledo, Ohio – Imagination Station’s Summer Day Camp program is officially underway. Campers arrived before 9:00am this morning, eager to start an exciting, new experience.  Catapults, Coasters and Cars!, the theme of this year’s summer camp, will give these kids [...]

June 28, 1010 Imagination Station’s Summer Day Camp kicks off Campers invent, build and explore! Toledo, Ohio – Imagination Station’s Summer Day Camp program is officially underway. Campers arrived before 9:00am this morning, eager to start an exciting, new experience.  Catapults, Coasters and Cars!, the theme of this year’s summer camp, will give these kids [...]

Catapults, Coasters and Cars!
3 weeks remain. Space is still available.

Have you ever wondered how plastic is made? This activity lets you make your own plastic.

The Cartesian Ketchup Diver is one, of many activities, that we have available to all of our visitors for free in our exhibit area, Science Studio. This activity uses a ketchup packet, water, and a 20 oz. bottle. In a nutshell the idea is that you place the packet into the bottle and it floats, [...]

Imagination Station challenged area classrooms to stretch the limits of science with rubber bands. Here are the winners!

Teacher of the Month Mrs. Carolyn Metcalf Crossgates Elementary Toledo, Ohio Nominated by Linda Knotts I’d ask that you would thoughtfully consider our Special Education Teacher, Mrs. Metcalf for the May Teacher of the Month.  She teaches 1st, 2nd & 3rd grades in one classroom for a total of 12 children with special needs.  It’s [...]

Join other students, educators, parents and business leaders for a discussion on how we can all support STEM education for a brighter future.