Science Game

Science Game is a virtual science lab with four experiment stations you can play in your browser. Test float or sink, wire up circuits, time a pendulum on four worlds and try a red cabbage pH indicator. Every station has a short quiz, and your results go into a lab notebook with badges. It’s free, with no download or sign-up, and it works on desktop and phones.

How to play

• Density: choose one of eight objects, from cork to a copper coin, and one of four liquids: cooking oil, water, maple syrup or honey. Predict Float or Sink, then watch it drop. An object floats when it is less dense than the liquid. In Density tower mode you pour all four liquids, bottom layer first, and then drop every object in at once to see which layer each one rests on.
• Circuits: 12 puzzles on a small breadboard grid. Tap a dashed slot to cycle through the parts you have, such as wires, bulbs, resistors and batteries, and tap switches to open or close them. The game solves the circuit with Ohm’s law and Kirchhoff’s laws and shows the current through every bulb. Connect a bare wire across the battery and you get a short-circuit warning instead.
• Pendulum: choose Earth, the Moon, Mars or Jupiter, set the string length from 0.10 to 2.00 m and release. The game times each full swing and shows the measured period next to the formula T = 2π√(L/g). Challenge mode gives you a target period on a given world, and you have to find a length that hits it within 2%.
• pH Mixer: add up to four parts of lemon juice, vinegar, milk, water or baking soda solution to a cup, using up to two kinds at once. Predict the color the red cabbage indicator will turn: red/pink, purple or blue/green. Acid plus baking soda fizzes, and water dilutes a solution without pushing it past pH 7.

Each station has a Quiz button with four questions. Score 3 or more to earn that station’s badge. More badges reward solving all 12 circuits and a perfect quiz. The Notebook tab logs every experiment you run.

The science behind it

The values come from Wikipedia, NASA fact sheets and PubChem. Cooking oil is about 0.91 to 0.93 g/cm³, water 1.00, maple syrup about 1.33 and honey 1.38 to 1.45, so in a density tower oil always ends up on top and honey on the bottom. Surface gravity is 9.8 m/s² on Earth, 1.62 on the Moon and 3.7 on Mars. For Jupiter, which has no solid surface, the game uses 23.1 m/s², measured at the cloud tops. The pendulum swings at a small angle, where the period hardly depends on how wide the swing is.

A real bulb’s resistance changes as it heats up, but the game treats each bulb as a fixed 6 ohm resistor. The pH values are typical: lemon juice is about 2.2, vinegar 2 to 3, milk 6.5 to 6.8, pure water 7 and baking soda solution about 8.3. Red cabbage juice turns red or pink in acids, purple near neutral and blue to green to yellow in bases.

Tips

• Compare two numbers. Float or sink only depends on whether the object’s density is lower than the liquid’s.
• Series divides, parallel shares. Bulbs in series split the battery’s voltage and glow dimmer. Bulbs in parallel each get the full voltage.
• Four times longer, twice as slow. The period grows with the square root of the length, so to double the period you need four times the length.
• Mind the battery’s + end. Two batteries pointing the same way add their voltages. Turn one around and they cancel out.

Want more science? Explore every element on our interactive periodic table, or tour the planets in the Solar System explorer.

FAQ

Is Science Game free?

Yes. It’s free to play in your browser with no account and nothing to install.

Can I do these experiments at home?

Several of them, like a density tower or a red cabbage indicator, are classic kitchen experiments. If you try one for real, do it with an adult, and never taste lab mixtures or connect a battery straight across a wire. The game itself gives no instructions for anything dangerous.

Why doesn’t the pendulum period match the formula exactly?

The formula assumes a very small swing. The game swings at 8 degrees, where the true period is only about 0.1% longer, so the measured and formula values agree to about two decimal places.

Is my progress saved?

Yes. Badges, solved circuits and your lab notebook are saved in your browser on this device.