If the question is whether to tie a bunch of these giant latex professional weather balloons to a lawn chair, the answer is no. (They burst at about 82,000 feet anyway.) Besides, this is a true weather balloon, with plenty of fun, nonfatal uses. The cream-colored latex balloon is approx 40" dia when flaccid, you should pardon the expression, but has an 8-foot dia when inflated. The neck is 9" long x 1" dia. Scientists, meteorologists, inventors, teachers and the imaginative filmmaker are warned to launch the balloon carefully. The material is delicate and not made to survive brushes with pavement, pine branches, or clumsy physics students.

Red not available and only available in egg shell/cream color only. 

They might as well learn something while they're trying to outlast you on eating those lima beans. Set the table with educational placemats and they'll be at least a touch smarter after dinner, even if their vegetable intake is low. These laminated, 12" x 17-3/8" mats have full-color fronts, black-and-white backs. Choose the United States Map, Stars & Constellations, the Periodic Table of Elements or The Metric System.

Nice little teaching magnet set for the primary grade classroom has (6) magnets in star, two-bar, horseshoe and ring shapes, all plastic coated in silver and red to mark the poles. Range in size from 1” to 3”, and include a few paper clips and small nails for demo purposes.

All you add is sunlight to use this 50-foot long solar balloon to prove that Bernoulli was right. Pascal, too. Demonstrate buoyancy, convection, thermodynamics and the power of the sun. Measures 29" dia and comes with 400 feet of string, and instructions.

We just learned that. You’d think we’d have known. Now we do. They’re sort of like round dreidels, with a hollowed-out middle around the stem, which causes them to turn themselves upside down while they’re spinning. Great lesson in center-of-mass instruction for physics teachers. Includes an explanatory booklet with activities and discussion topics. You’ll get (3) wooden tops at 7/8”, 1-1/4” and 1-1/2” dia.

Forget what 2 + 5 equals. If you want your kid to grow up to be an astronomer, best get this set of (36) constellation flash cards from Astronomy Magazine. Measure 4” x 6” with actual photographs of the stars on the student side, and the answers plus a bunch-o-facts about each star on the back, because what are you, an astromony professor?

Sounds like a Portuguese percussion album, but it’s just an alnico bar magnet in a mount that lets it rotate freely to demonstrate the three-dimensional magnetic field. Ideal for experiments about forces between magnetic poles, fields around wire and coils, and the properties of fields produced by electric currents. Also handy as part of your ghost-hunting gear.

Same here. Try the Ferrofluid Magnetic Display, a little sealed bottle with virtually fluid nano-particles of ferrous metal suspended in liquid. You’ll get (4) powerful 1/2” dia x 3/16” neodymium disc magnets, (2) of them attached to chess-pawnish holders. Move the magnets in assorted combinations around the bottle for fascinating effects. Sort of the marriage of science with desk toys, but students can’t spill these particles all over the place.

The next best thing to lightning bolts! 200,000 volts of electrostatic energy created by our Van de Graaff generator. Measures 6-1/2” diameter by 15” tall, includes a spare belt and a set of instructions detailing lots of fun experiments. For grade 6 and up. This is not a toy and should be used under adult supervision. A great tool for teaching about electricity. For your convenience, we now have Lightning Belts: replacement belts to drive that overworked generator.

This 10-piece set of 1" cubes is made to test density in the classroom, and by all means you should do that. Otherwise, how will the children ever understand density? But we like to just play with the cubes, to set them on a desk, or stack them, or line them up, or make shapes out of them, or just pick them up and marvel at their weight differences. You get perfect cubes of aluminum, steel, brass, copper, acrylic, oak, nylon, pine, poplar and PVC.