8 Awesome Science Experiments For Real, Proper Grown Ups

There are literally thousands of do-it-yourself science experiments for kids on the internet. An endless array of funny, quirky experiments that you can use to educate and edify your little sprogs so that they grow up to be highly-paid rocket scientists who will be able to put you in an expensive care home.

But why should the little'uns get all the fun? Where are our science experiments? It doesn't matter if you're 32 and living in a 2 bed flat with a stranger from craigslist, you deserve a magical erupting papier mâché volcano in your life too.

Thankfully, the internet is also full of a load of adult-children who think that the best way to spend a weekend is by constructing a potato cannon - and they couldn't be more right, that is the best way to spend your weekend.

With this little lot (plus the whole world of Youtube science experiments to explore), you can fill your evenings and weekends with bangs, smells, slime and fog, before putting that tie on and heading back out to work on Monday morning (and subsequently trying to explain to your boss why there's glittery glow-in-the-dark silly putty on your shoes and a burn hole in your jacket).

Quickly, to the secret lab!

This unearthly, glowing goo is not only super fun to play with, but also enables you to teach people about science the next time you're at a rave.

The Magic Mud (XXL) is what is known as a non-Newtonian fluid and has some crazy properties. When you agitate it, the mud will behave like a solid dough, but the moment you stop moving it, the dough will transform into a gloopy liquid goo.

The awesome glow effect is produced by using tonic water in your mud mixture. The magic ingredient here is the quinine in the tonic water - it is the substance that gives it its bitter flavour and was originally added to help protect the British from Malaria whilst they were cruising about the planet, stealing countries and that.

When quinine is exposed to ultraviolet light, the shape of the molecule means that it absorbs the invisible UV light and emits a visible blue light, causing it to fluoresce.