Add water to your container to watch your hermit crab come out of his/her shell.  Hermit Crabs use the empty shells from molluscs.

 Worm farming is a simple way of turning vegetable and fruit scraps into a great potting soil or soil amendment for your garden or house plants. It can be done year round, by apartment dwellers and home owners. Worm farming is particularly useful for people who would like to compost their food scraps but do not have space for a backyard compost bin.  The worms are going to be happier when kept in the dark.

Worms. We  used worms. They are also called red wrigglers or manure worms..

Bedding material. Keep the bedding damp but not sopping. The moisture helps them to breathe, but too much water will drown them.

Food. You can feed your worms fruit and vegetable scraps and starchy scraps, like bread, oatmeal, and pasta. You can even feed them grits if they are southern worms, like ours. Do not feed them too much acidic foods, like citric fruits, coffee ground and tea bags. They do best with a pH between 7 & 8. You can use egg shells to balance the effects of coffee grounds, orange and lemon peels. Make sure that the eggshells are cooked before adding them to the worm farm. If they are not from boiled eggs, you can cook them by putting them in a cup of water in the microwave. Never feed your worms meat, poultry, dairy products, or salty food , like potato chips. These will create odors and attract insects. Your worms will eat about half their body weight each day. Take this into consideration when you are deciding how much food to add to the bin.

Worms require oxygen so keep the lid partially open to allow air to circulate. You should also turn the bedding with a trowel periodically to improve air circulation in the farm.

Worms will function very well at room temperature. Keep the farm temperature between +40 degrees F and +85 degrees F. Remember that heat will build up quickly in the farm if it is left in the sunlight.

Red worms reproduce often. Small, oval shaped cocoons in the bedding indicate that nature is taking its course. Cocoons may contain several baby worms and will take several weeks to hatch. Watch for tiny white worms. Poultry egg shells added to the bedding will provide calcium the worms need to reproduce. Don't worry about red worms taking over the estate, their population is limited by the size of their environment.

Do not over feed the worms. Overfeeding can lead to odor problems. As your worm population increases, you can add more food per day. Burying the food in the damp newspaper will keep mold from growing in the worm farm.

If your bedding is too wet, add some dry bedding, leave the cover off for a few days, or carefully drain the water off. If it is too dry, add some cool water and leave the farm loosely covered.

Soon you will notice an increase in the worm castings in your worm farm. This makes a great natural fertilizer. And all it cost you was a little time and some stuff that you were going to toss in the garbage.

When you see that bedding is no longer identifiable, you will want to harvest. Worms cannot survive in their own waste. Now if you are raising worms, you harvest the worms. We harvest the castings. The choice is yours.

Some folks sort the worms out of the castings and put the worms in fresh bedding. We have other things to do with our time and prefer a split harvest method. It helps if you have trained your worms ahead of time for this harvest method. To train your worms, you start feeding them at only one end of the bin. Do this for about a week. (Worms learn pretty fast.) Now take the bedding/castings out of the end of the farm where you were not feeding them and add it to your plants or garden. You will be removing about half to two thirds of the bedding/castings in this step. You will lose some worms, but those were the ones that were not very smart. Remember you trained the others. Place the remaining bedding/castings in a container while you scrub the bin and fix new bedding. Prepare this bedding the same way you did the first time, damp newspaper, crushed egg shells, and a handful of dirt. Now add the worms you trained, castings and all onto the fresh bedding. Feed and you are back in business. I have found that the worms will move out of the old bedding in a couple of days. If you want a cleaner farm, you can remove the old bedding in a few days

This slime recipe is based on the classic polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) formula with sodium tetraborate as the cross-linking agent. Doesn't that sound impressive?  What makes our slime formulation unlike anything else on the market is the addition of our stabilizing agents that help to reduce the growth of bacteria while preserving the stretchy, stringy, gooey properties of slime that everyone loves. Turn this ever popular science activity into a real learning experience that is filled with real fun.

What does it teach?Slime is a great way to introduce your class to the chemistry behind cross-linking solutions. The long-linking chains of molecules in the PVA are called polymers; the Borax solution acts as a cross-linking agent for these polymers and helps the chains connect. Slime solution is also a great illustration of what scientists call a “Non-Newtonian Fluid”… when you apply pressure it forms a sort of solid and breaks. When you let it flow like a liquid it easily stretches. All of these science secrets are made even better with the addition of our special coloring agent that fluoresces under black light. When the energy from the black light “excites” the fluorescent dye, you end up with a brightly glowing, very exciting, ooey, gooey experiment! (For the full glowing effect, you will need to purchase a large black light.)

Bubbles are beautiful, fun, and fascinating, but do you know what they are and how they work? Here's a look at the science behind bubbles. What Is a Bubble? A bubble is a thin film of soapy water. Most of the bubbles that you see are filled with air, but you can make a bubble using other gases, such as carbon dioxide. The film that makes the bubble has three layers. A thin layer of water is sandwiched between two layers of soap molecules. Each soap molecule is oriented so that its polar (hydrophilic) head faces the water, while its hydrophobic hydrocarbon tail extends away from the water layer. No matter what shape a bubble has initially, it will try to become a sphere. The sphere is the shape that minimizes the surface area of the structure, which makes it the shape that requires the least energy to achieve. What Happens When Bubbles Meet? When bubbles stack, do they remain spheres? No, when two bubbles meet, they will merge walls to minimize their surface area. If bubbles that are the same size meet, then the wall that separates them will be flat. If bubbles that are different sizes meet, then the smaller bubble will bulge into the large bubble. Bubbles meet to form walls at an angle of 120°. If enough bubbles meet, the cells will form hexagons. You can see observe this structure by making prints of bubbles or by blowing bubbles between two clear plates. Bubble Solutions Though soap bubbles are traditionally made from (you guessed it) soap, most bubble solutions consist of detergent in water. Glycerin often is added as an ingredient. Detergents form bubbles in much the same way as soap, but detergents will form bubbles even in tap water, which contains ions that could prevent soap bubble formation. Soap contains a carboxylate group that reacts with calcium and magnesium ions, while detergents lack that functional group. Glycerin, C3H5(OH)3, extends the life of a bubble by forming weaking hydrogen bonds with water, slowing down its evaporation.

Learning about the science of things that glows requires an understanding of two important terms - fluorescence and phosphorescence. It's also important to note that not all zinc sulfide glows, but luminous zinc sulfide does glow!

Fluorescence - This type of luminescence occurs when some form of radiation, such as light, causes an object to glow. For example, fluorescent papers and poster boards glow in the daylight. They may seem to glow even brighter under black light (ultraviolet), but in either case, as soon as the light is removed, the glow stops. Fluorescent things do not glow in the dark all by themselves – they require some other form of energy such as ultraviolet light to “excite” them.

Phosphorescence - Phosphorescence is just like fluorescence, except that the glow continues even after the light used to excite it is removed. “Glow in the dark” toys phosphoresce brightly in total darkness after being “charged” or excited by ordinary white or ultraviolet light. Glow Powder works by absorbing surrounding light energy and then releases that energy when the lights go out. It's called a phosphorescent It's the perfect way to get your students excited about energy... and a great way to celebrate Halloween! Just add glow powder to almost any of our favorite products and you'll have an eerie new take on your favorite experiments!

So, how does zinc sulfide work? Imagine that an atom looks something like our solar system. The sun would be the nucleus consisting of positive charges called protons and neutral charges called neutrons. The planets spinning around the sun would be similar to the electrons of an atom in orbits around the nucleus. 

When the electrons in the atoms of special molecules like zinc sulfide become excited, they move farther away from the nucleus -- into higher or more distant orbits. In order to become excited, the electrons must take on energy. In this case, light provided the required energy to cause the electrons to move to a higher energy level. It’s as if Earth were to move farther away from the sun into the orbit of Mars or Jupiter. 

The electrons will remain in the excited state as long as they receive light to energize them. But, when the light used as an exciter is removed, the electrons will slowly return to their original lower orbits. As they do so, they give up the energy that excited them in the form of light.

Some animals live underground for all or much of the time. Living underground has many advantages, including protection from some predators, from extreme temperatures (both hot and cold), and from overly dry climates. Many animals also hunt for food underground, like tubers, roots, other plant material, worms, grubs, insects, insect eggs and larvae.

Some animals, like moles and earthworms spend their entire lives underground. Others, like the prairie dog, spend some time below ground and some time above ground. Some animals spend a portion of their life cycle underground (for example, some insect larvae).

Fossorial means relating to burrowing or living underground. Fossorial animals are adapted to living underground. Aardvarks, armadillos, and moles are fossorial animals

Teeth of Carnivores 
Carnivores such as dogs or cats have long sharp teeth for stabbing and killing their prey. These long, 
sharp teeth are near the front of their mouths and are called canine teeth. In the back of their mouth 
are short, sharp teeth for grabbing and holding a struggling animal. Carnivores eat by taking large bites 
and swallowing chunks often without chewing their food. 
Some teeth can be easily distinguished by shape and/or placement in the mouth. Incisors (front-most 
teeth) in carnivores tend to be small and mostly used as a grooming tool since their mode of eating is to 
primarily bite off large chunks and swallow without a lot of chewing. Their canines (stabbing teeth) tend 
to be prominent and enlarged facilitating the holding and dispatching of prey. Premolars and molars are 
reduced in number and have sharp surfaces. 
Teeth of Herbivores 
Herbivores have wide, flat teeth (molars) in the back of their mouths for grinding grasses, seeds, leaves, 
bark, and other plants they eat. In the front of their mouths, they tend to have sharp, flat teeth for 
snipping off these plants. 
Rats and mice are herbivores and also rodents. One characteristic of rodents is that the incisors (frontmost teeth) are chisel-shaped, and ever-growing (continue to grow the animal’s entire life). The front of 
the incisor is made of a stronger material than the backside of the incisor, so as the animal chews, the 
back of the tooth wears down faster, adding to the chisel-shape. Also, many rodents have pigmented or 
colored incisors as is evident in the rat. 
In some herbivores, such as a deer, the upper incisors and the upper canines are missing. The lower 
canines are either extremely modified and reduced in size or missing altogether. Some herbivores will 
rely on their tongues to lick up leaves or grass then shear off the plant materials with their lower incisors 
only. Many herbivores have special stomachs so they can regurgitate the food from a special 
compartment in their stomach to continue chewing it at a later time. Extra compartments are needed in 
the stomach to help break down the tough cellulose in plant matter, especially for browsers, such as 
deer. 
Teeth of Omnivores 
Raccoons and skunks are examples of omnivores, meaning they will eat both plants and animals, 
including worms and insects. Teeth of omnivores are not as uniform in type as the teeth of carnivores 
and herbivores. In addiction, the canine teeth are less prominent and the molars are more flat than jagged. In fact, humans are omnivores as well.