Zoom with the LSOP Team, Live!
Everyone is welcome to join—any age, any location. Hop on the Zoom with us!
Curious about how magnets work? Wonder why the sky is blue? Looking for some cool science experiments you can try with materials you already have at home?
So are we!
We are currently on summer break, but we’ll be back in the fall with more episodes!
And do let us know what topics you’d like us to cover next. What are you curious about?
Upcoming Episodes
We’ve wrapped up for the 2021-2022 school year, but we’ll be back in September, 2022. Let us know what topics we should do next year!
If you are a K-12 teacher and would like to suggest topics for future episodes, or if you’d like for us to feature your class, please get in touch!
Little Shop Live in the Classroom
When instruction was hybrid or remote, Little Shop Live brought some science into to the homes of students. As schools return to in-person instruction, we want to come back to the classroom with you!
We’ll keep the same time and the same general format, but with a few changes:
- We’ll pick topics matched to science teaching standards. Do you have a topic you’d like us to treat? Let us know!
- We’ll do episodes every few weeks, which will give us enough time to come up with some truly cool things.
- We’d love to connect with classes. Do you want the LSOP Live team to visit your class, or to include you over Zoom? We can do that…. Let us know!
- We’ll provide a resource page for teachers (and students and families) to see small video clips we made and to find additional information.
Do you have an idea or a suggestion for us? Please do contact us and share your ideas!
How LSOP Live Works
Making a safe science experience for everyone!
We have set up LSOP Live as a Zoom meeting so we can see you, and we can take comments and suggestions from our participants. Your energy is what makes the Little Shop what it is! The more excited you are, the more ideas you share, the better it is for everyone.
But we want to be sure that everyone can enjoy every minute of LSOP Live without worrying about excess chatter or a cluttered chat, so we’ve set up our Zoom meetings to be safe and secure:
- We want you to be able to communicate with us, to send us questions or suggestions—so the chat field will be available for you! But anything you type goes only to us; the other participants will not see your comments.
- We will monitor the chat, and we will have a person dedicated to watching the chat and adjusting meeting settings as needed.
- Everyone will be muted—so you can ooh and aah and make as much noise as you like without bothering other people. If we want to give someone a chance to talk, we will unmute them.
- We will spotlight the program video, and keep other people from sharing their screens.
- We have set a limit on the number of participants. We can take up to 300 participants. This will let us keep careful track of everything that is going on. If you aren’t able to get in, you needn’t miss all of the fun—you can watch the video that we’ll post.
- If people are disruptive, we will remove them.
We have also made some upgrades to our audio and video equipment so we will have a better looking and better sounding program than ever.
We have been impressed by the energy and enthusiasm of our participants, and we look forward to seeing you all on the next installment of LSOP Live!
Past Episodes
LSOP Live: Sounds Like Science, May 13, 2022
In the final episode of the school year, we’ll do more than a dozen exciting experiments on sound. We’ll show you how to adjust your voice to make you sound as if you are suddenly very small—or very large. We’ll show you how to play your mouth like a flute, how to play a trumpet [...]
LSOP Live: Energy, April 8, 2022
Can you really cook a chicken by slapping it? How many pushups can you do on the energy in a candy bar? We’ll also look at how transformations and transfers of energy let us shoot things in the air and keep our cool when things get hot. We’ll show you how a simple trick involving [...]
LSOP Live: Magnetism, March 11, 2022
American nickels aren’t magnetic. But Canadian nickels are. So are some kinds of breakfast cereal. These are some of the surprising tidbits about magnetism we’ll cover in this episode, our last installment before Spring Break. We’ll make push pins dance, we’ll make a motor in under 30 seconds, we’ll use magnetism to record secret messages. [...]
LSOP Live: Light and Color, February 18, 2022
In this episode, we’ll show you more than a dozen amazing things you can do with light. You can make things appear. Make things disappear. Make light follow a stream of water. Break light into a rainbow.
LSOP Live: It’s About Time, December 17, 2021
In this episode, we’ll show you how to make a video appear 3D by using a pair of sunglasses, we’ll show you how to make holiday lights appear to dance, how to make a fan appear to stop—and a dozen more activities that you can try yourself. It’s all about time—about synchronizing motion, about slowing [...]
LSOP Live: Physics of the Body, November 19, 2021
There is a lot of physics that underlies the way your body works, and we’ll explore 20 different cool experiments that illustrate how principles of electricity, sound, motion, and light are are at work in your body. We will show you how to make a simple “lie detector” that can tell if you are nervous, [...]
Spooky Science: Adventures Beyond the Rainbow
In this episode, we’ll show you how to see the blood flowing through your veins, how to use a light bulb to take an “X-ray” of your hand, and how to make writing vanish and reappear. In a half hour, we’ll share 20+ demonstrations that are based in science, but appear a bit spooky, from [...]
LSOP Live: Please Try This At Home, Water and Air, October 8, 2021
In this episode, we’ll share 20+ activities you can try at home or in the classroom, all while learning about the properties of water and air. We’ll make a rubber duck float half a foot above the surface of a fish tank, we’ll make a light bulb float in mid-air, we’ll make coins disappear, we’ll […]
LSOP Live: Get Moving!, September 24, 2021
How does it feel when someone drops a 12 foot beach ball on you? Are there mattresses that you simply can’t jump on? Can we make a giant stuffed bear sail across CSU’s lagoon on a homemade hovercraft without it capsizing? The Little Shop Live team is back with another action-packed episode, this time on [...]
LSOP Live: Everyday Science, Friday, May 14
In our season finale, we show you dozens of cool science experiments and science tricks you can do at home with easy-to-find materials. You can make things float in the air, make things disappear, make things ride on a cushion of steam and more! We invited every member of the LSOP Live team to show [...]
LSOP Live: Animals!, Friday, May 7, 2021
There is a lot of interesting science behind how animals see the world, move through the world, communicate with each other, and generally do what they do. Geckos use static electricity to climb walls, birds can see light beyond the end of the rainbow, and bees can sense electric fields—and they use this sense to [...]
LSOP Live: Sustainability, Friday, April 30
Join the LSOP Live team for a special show on creative ways to reduce and reuse, as well as creative ways to convert and store energy. We show you how to make electricity using hibiscus tea and powdered donuts (and a bit of sunlight). We power a toy using heat from a cup of coffee, [...]
LSOP Live: Plants!, April 23, 2021
Plants are kind of amazing. That big tree in your yard? It grew big and tall with little more than air, water, and sunlight. Plants can’t move from place to place, but they have clever ways of making sure their seeds can. And plants can respond—and even move—in response to stimulus. On this show, we [...]
LSOP Live: Fooling Your Brain, Friday, April 9
You know about optical illusions, where your eyes see something that isn’t really there—but do you know that there are hearing illusions, touch illusions, and even taste illusions? It turns out that it’s not that hard to fool your brain, and doing so teaches us a lot about how your brain works. Video Shorts
LSOP Live: Do The Locomotion, April 2, 2021
By student request: A show about how you walk, how fish swim, how birds fly! If you want to move forward, you need to push backward—on the ground, on the water, or on the air. You want to do this efficiently, using as little energy as possible. In this show, we answer a bunch of [...]
LSOP Live: Rock On!, March 16, 2021
What’s so cool about rocks? A lot, as it turns out. In this episode, we show you rocks that pop like popcorn, rocks that you can use to make electrical circuits, rocks that split light in two. We also show you how to read history in rocks that you find, and even how to find [...]
LSOP Live: Force and Motion, March 12, 2021
By request from a local school: Force and Motion! When you jump in the air, it’s not your legs that push you upward—it’s actually the ground! And you know you have to push something to get it moving—but you also have to push to make it stop. In this episode, we make things float and […]
LSOP: Invisible Forces, March 5, 2021
By request from a local school: Invisible Forces! You can’t see gravity—but you can certainly see its effects. And it works at a distance—you don’t need to be in contact with the earth to feel its pull. We say that the earth has a gravitational field around it—and if you are in the field, you […]
LSOP Live: Science It Up!, February 26, 2021
Last week, we asked students to share their questions with us—and did they ever! We got questions from “Why can we see clouds, since they are made of air?” to “Why do snowflakes have different designs?” On this episode, we take one question after another and Science It Up! We take each question and use [...]
LSOP Live: Bouncing, Bending, and Twisting Light, February 19, 2021
Mirrors, lenses, and polarizers, oh my! In this episode we show you some amazing effects that you can recreate at home. We make objects seem to disappear, make transparent objects develop colors, turn people upside down, make a mirror out of transparent materials, and show you how to use a mirror to make what seems [...]
LSOP Live: Sinking and Floating, February 12, 2021
A bowling ball—does it sink or float? The answer might surprise you, as will dozens of the experiments we share. We float bubbles and steel balls, and make a ketchup packet go back and forth between sinking and floating. We answer the question: What happens to buoyancy when you turn off gravity? And we leave [...]
LSOP Live: The Music Show, February 5, 2021
Talking about music gives us a chance to talk about forces, frequency, energy, vibrations, and states of matter. It’s a rich topic, and one we had a lot of fun exploring. How many ways can you play Hot Cross Buns? We play it on glasses, bottles, sewer pipes, electrical conduit, and, of course, actual hot [...]
LSOP Live: It’s About Time, January 29, 2021
This episode is about time! We use video to slow time down, to speed time up, to make time go backwards—and we see how this changes our view of the world. We also do some cool tabletop experiments with metronomes, with hot cocoa, and with hand sanitizer. What do these things have to do with [...]
LSOP Live: The Heart of the Matter, January 22, 2021
This week, we are trying something new! We treat topics that are part of the state science standards, to better connect with what students are learning in school. This week, we consider the following fact: matter is made of atoms. Understanding this helps understand matter’s appearance and its behavior. Why is steel bouncy? (It is—very [...]
LSOP Live: The Water Show, January 15, 2021
What’s so special about water? Quite a bit, as it turns out! In this episode, we show you a bunch of simple experiments you can do that illustrate the special properties of water. We make water freeze on command, make a stream of water follow a string, use water to lift writing off glass, and [...]
LSOP Live: The Weather Show, January 8, 2021
What makes clouds form? And why are they white? How does the spin of the earth lead to the spin of a storm? Why do some storms make lightning? And how does lightning lead to thunder? We answer all of these questions—and more!—on our first show of 2021!
LSOP Live: The Animal Show, December 18, 2020
This is the #1 request we’ve had for a show: Animals! We are be joined in the studio by some animals, and we also show some videos of animals doing what they do. We got some great videos from PSD students that are featured: horses, snakes, eagles—and lots of dogs and cats.
LSOP Live: Science Magic, December 11, 2020
In this episode we things disappear, make things levitate in mid-air, make a broken glass reassemble itself and more! We do a lot of things that look like magic, and show you the science that makes the magic happen. As always, we show you a bunch of things you can try at home. Remember, it's [...]
LSOP Live: Put a Spin On It, December 4, 2020
What do tops and tornadoes have in common? They do what they do because of spin. In this episode, we show you how to make a centrifuge, how to make a tornado in a jar, and we make tornadoes with fog and flame. Check out our most head-spinning episode yet!
LSOP Live: Balance, November 20, 2020
Be prepared to be active! You’ll want to stand up and trying some of the activities that we share. We discuss how your sense of balance works and how to make it better. We show you how you can experience three different kinds of dizziness. We show you how to make it impossible to stand [...]
LSOP Live: Energy, November 13, 2020
Energy is a science principle that can be used to explain and explore so many things. We show exploding bubbles and bouncing balloons, heat up a gummy bear by hitting it with a hammer, launch stuffed animals at great speeds, and explain the science of how it all works and how you can try all [...]
LSOP Live: Force and Motion, November 6, 2020
You know how when you go over the first big hill on a roller coaster, it feels like your stomach rises up? That’s because it does…. We have a great demonstration to show this, as well as some things that look like magic. Can you pull a tablecloth out from under glasses on a table? [...]
LSOP Live: The Goo Show, October 30, 2020
The boundary between solids and liquids isn’t as clear as you might think. You can make a liquid behave like a solid, or a solid behave like a liquid. Some things have properties of both, and there is a lot of interesting science that lies underneath. This is a messy but informative show. Can you [...]
LSOP Live: Pressure, October 23, 2020
We use pressure to levitate light bulbs and crush cans, including a really large one. We show you how to make an airbrush with a straw and a marker, allowing you to make some really cool artwork. We have a straw so long you can’t drink through it. And special guests. And more!
LSOP Live: Heat and Thermodynamics, October 9, 2020
When will fire pop a balloon? How can you use heat to power a boat? Can you see thermal energy, or use it to make art or a delicious treat? Find out the answers to all these questions and more on this episode of LSOP Live!
LSOP Live: Light and Color, October 2, 2020
We have packed this episode with special surprises! We use laser pointers to peer inside objects and to pop balloons. We show why the sky is blue and why sunsets are red. We show you how to write with light and listen to light, and let you see beyond the rainbow! We are joined by [...]
LSOP Live: Waves and Oscillations, September 25, 2020
Why do you swing your arms when you walk? Why is lightning followed by thunder? And, most importantly, what happens when you drop a bowling ball on a giant water balloon? In this episode of LSOP Live, we discuss all this and more. This week, we introduce a new feature – polling! We ask you [...]
LSOP Live: Magnetism, September 18, 2020
Refrigerator magnets aren’t like other magnets…. They don’t have just one north and one south pole; they might have a dozen of each! And why do magnets stick to the refrigerator anyway? In this episode of LSOP Live we do more than a dozen cool experiments with magnets and magnetism. We show you where secret [...]
LSOP Live: Bubbles, September 11, 2020
Brian, Brenna, Maude, and Emma serve up some awesome science you can do with soap, water, and bubbles. Check out floating coins, surface tension, sand that does not get wet, floating nail polish air, square bubbles, bubbles with holes in them, juggling bubbles, and our secret recipe for bubble solution!
LSOP Live: Kitchen Chemistry, September 4, 2020
Join the LSOP crew for some science fun in the kitchen! Color-changing tea, making cheese in 1 minute, making ink disappear, and, for our grand finale, a rather frothy microwave surprise.
