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Photo of a laser show

List of science words

Simple scientific concepts that can be little tricky to explain, but we've tried our best.

Photo of an albino squirrel
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Ais forAlbino

An animal is albino if it is missing the brown pigment in their skin and hair that would otherwise make them a normal color. Albino animals are usually pure white with pink or pale blue eyes. Albino animals don't usually live very long in the wild as they do not camouflage very well. Albino and white animals are also prone to sunburn. Albino rabbits are very common as pets. The albino in the picture is a squirrel.

Bis forBoil

Something boils when it becomes so hot it changes from liquid to a gas. The picture is of some water boiling on a stove top. You can see the gas being made, in the form of bubbles in the water. People boil water so they can make soup or tea or coffee.
Photo of a balloon bursting.
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Bis forBurst

A burst is when something suddenly pops open, usually because the pressure inside builds up too high for the container holding it. Bursting is used to describe new buds bursting into life, or fireworks bursting, or a bubble or balloon popping.
Condensation forms when water vapour hits a cool surface and turns back into water. You often see condensation on a cold drink bottle, or on the inside of your windows on a cold morning. Condensation outside is often called dew.
Photo of a brick and a sponge.
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Dis forDensity

If you have two things that are the same size, and one weighs a lot more than the other, the heavy thing is more dense. The sponge on the left in the picture is much, much lighter than the brick in the picture, but they are around the same size. The sponge has a lower density than the brick.

Dis forDissolve

You dissolve a solid in a liquid by mixing the solid around until it seems to disappear. Once the solid is completely dissolved, the resulting solution behaves exactly like a liquid. Solids won't dissolve in any liquid, they must be soluble in them. For example, table salt is soluble in water but not in oil. Solids that do not dissolve in a liquid but are mixed into a liquid can be removed with a filter. Filtering is an effective way to remove very fine particles of dirt from water.

Eis forEcho

An echo is reflected sound. You get echos most often in enclosed spaces with hard walls, like an empty room with wooden floors, or the inside of a large concrete pipe like in the picture. If you make a noise in a place like this, the noise you make sounds like it is being repeated back at you again and again, getting quieter each time.
Photo of a power plug
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Electricity is the flow of charged particles through a conducting material, usually copper. Electricity is used for a huge variety of things today, with virtually all modern devices powered by it. Electricity is used to make many common things around you work, such as your refrigerator, modern watches, computers and phones. Electricity can be stored inside a battery to be used later. You may also be interested in static electricity or lightning, two other effects of electricity.
Photo of steam rising off a fist
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Evaporation is the process of a liquid slowly turning into a gas. You see evaporation in everyday life when you hang out washing (laundry) or something else wet to dry. Evaporation happens when the molecules in the liquid get enough energy - usually from sunlight - to break through the surface of the liquid and float away. You can see the fist in the picture is steaming as the water from a hot shower evaporates away.
When something explodes it suddenly gets bigger. Explosions usually make a loud noise and make a lot of heat. Popcorn popping is an example of a small explosion, and a bomb going off is an example of a large one. Large explosions can create so much force they can reduce buildings to rubble.