Inspired by the curiosity of Isaac Newton?
Get the picture book on Amazon →Science experiments for kids inspired by famous inventors
When history becomes something you touch
Your kid is dropping toys off the couch again. The third one in a row, same result every time: straight down, hits the floor. You're about to ask them to stop when it hits you: that's exactly what Isaac Newton kept doing. Just with apples. And then he spent twenty years figuring out why.
That's the thing about the world's greatest inventors: they weren't doing science for a test. They were just really, really curious. And most of the questions they asked are the same questions your kid is asking right now, in your living room, at age five.
These five science experiments for kids take the real questions those inventors asked and turn them into activities you can do today. You probably have everything you need in your house already.
If your child hasn't met Newton yet, that's a great place to start before you run the first experiment. Find the Isaac Newton picture book here → Kids who already know the story come to the experiment with a question already buzzing in their heads.
Why inventor-inspired experiments work so well for young kids
Here's what happens when you hand a five-year-old a ball and say "drop it." They drop it, shrug, and move on. Here's what happens when you first tell them that Isaac Newton spent years staring at falling objects trying to understand why they all fell at the same speed, no matter how heavy they were: they drop the ball and immediately want to test whether a heavier one is different.
The story is the hook. Narrative context changes everything for young kids.
Children ages 4–8 are still mostly story-thinkers, not abstract-concept thinkers. When you attach a concept to a person, a real person who was confused about the same thing, the concept has somewhere to live in their brain. "Gravity" is abstract. "Newton watching things fall and wondering why" is a story they can retell at dinner.
Famous inventor experiments also give you a natural answer to the question every kid asks mid-activity: "But why are we doing this?" Because Newton asked the same question in 1666, and this is how he started figuring it out. That's a better answer than "because science is important."
The experiments below follow a simple structure: one inventor, one question they actually asked, one activity your child can run with household items. Nothing elaborate. Nothing that takes an hour of prep.
5 science experiments for kids inspired by famous inventors
1. Newton's falling objects experiment
Isaac Newton started thinking seriously about gravity in 1666, the year a plague forced Cambridge University to send students home. He went back to his family farm, sat in the garden, and had a lot of uninterrupted time to think. Whether an apple actually fell on his head is debatable. That he spent months staring at falling objects and asking hard questions is not.
The question Newton asked: do heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones?
Aristotle said yes. For almost two thousand years, everyone assumed he was right. Newton had his doubts.
You'll need: one book, one flat sheet of paper.
Step 1: Hold the book in one hand and the flat sheet of paper in the other, both at the same height. Drop them at the same time. The book thuds; the paper floats down slowly.
Step 2: Crumple the paper into a tight ball. Drop both again from the same height. This time they land almost together.
What your child will discover: the paper didn't change weight, but it changed shape. What slowed it down the first time wasn't how heavy it was; it was air pushing back against the flat surface. When you crumple it, there's less surface for air to push against, so it falls faster.
The takeaway for a five-year-old: it's not about heavy vs. light. Shape matters too. That's surprising, and it's true.
2. Edison's circuit experiment
Thomas Edison didn't just invent the lightbulb. He spent two years on the bulb itself, testing over a thousand different filament materials, but what he actually built was the entire electrical grid to power one. The bulb was the visible part. The system behind it was the real invention.
The question Edison asked: how do you move electricity reliably from one place to another?
The answer is a circuit: electricity travels in a loop. Break the loop anywhere, and it stops.
You'll need: one AA battery, two short pieces of wire with stripped ends (or alligator clip wires, cheap from any hardware store), one small LED bulb (a pack of ten costs a couple of dollars).
Step 1: Touch one wire to the positive end of the battery (+) and the other end of that wire to the long leg of the LED.
Step 2: Touch the second wire to the negative end of the battery (–) and the other end to the short leg of the LED.
Step 3: When the loop is complete, the LED lights up.
Step 4: Lift one wire off the battery. The light goes out. Touch it back: light returns.
What your child will discover: the electricity isn't stored in the bulb. It has to flow through a complete path. The moment that path breaks, nothing works, even though the battery is still full of power.
For a kid ages 4–8, this is a small piece of magic: they control the light with their fingers. That control is the lesson. Edison's insight wasn't just technical; it was about building systems where the control point was reliable. Your child is doing the same thing.
3. Archimedes' water displacement experiment
Archimedes lived in ancient Syracuse (now Sicily) around 250 BC. The famous story, that he ran through the streets shouting "Eureka!" after figuring out water displacement, is likely exaggerated. What's not in doubt is that he worked out the principles of buoyancy with remarkable precision, using nothing but observation and geometry.
The question Archimedes asked: what makes something float?
Intuition says heavy things sink and light things float. But a steel cargo ship floats. A small pebble sinks. Weight alone doesn't explain it.
You'll need: a bowl of water, modeling clay, a handful of pennies.
Step 1: Roll the clay into a solid ball and drop it in the water. It sinks.
Step 2: Take the same clay and mold it into an open boat shape, curved up on the sides and flat on the bottom. Place it on the water. It floats.
Step 3: Start placing pennies one at a time into the clay boat. Count how many it takes before it sinks.
What your child will discover: the clay didn't get lighter when you shaped it into a boat. The same amount of clay that sank as a ball now floats, because the boat shape pushes more water out of the way than the ball did. That pushed-out water pushes back, and if the push is strong enough, the object floats.
This is hands-on STEM at its best, because they built the boat. They decided when to add pennies. They watched it fail. They tested a theory and saw the result.
4. Wright brothers' wing shape experiment
Before Orville and Wilbur Wright flew anything, they spent roughly three years building a wind tunnel in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, and testing over 200 different wing shapes. They weren't guessing. They had a specific question, and they tested systematically until they found an answer.
The question the Wright brothers asked: what wing shape actually creates lift?
The key was the curve. A wing curved on top and flatter on the bottom makes air travel faster over the top than the bottom. Faster-moving air has lower pressure. Lower pressure on top, higher pressure below: the wing gets pushed up.
You'll need: two strips of paper, each about 10 cm long and 4 cm wide.
Step 1: Hold one strip flat and blow air across the top of it. Not much happens.
Step 2: Curve the second strip slightly by bending it over your finger, so the top is rounded and the bottom is flatter. Hold one end and let the curved end hang slightly.
Step 3: Blow a steady stream of air across the top of the curved strip. It lifts.
What your child will discover: they're making their own wing. The blowing creates faster-moving air over the curved top surface, exactly the way a real airplane wing works. They'll feel it pull upward against their fingers.
This is the same question the Wright brothers answered with their wind tunnel. Your kitchen table version just involves paper and breath instead of motors.
5. Marie Curie's invisible forces experiment
Marie Curie worked with things she couldn't see. Radioactivity, the force she spent her career studying, was completely invisible, and it took years of precise measurement before anyone understood what it was or where it came from. She won two Nobel Prizes for making the invisible measurable.
We can't recreate radioactivity at home (nor should we). But her method, using observation to reveal an invisible force, is exactly what this experiment does.
The question Curie asked: how do you study something you can't see?
You measure its effects on things you can see.
You'll need: a magnet (any kind works), a sheet of white paper, iron filings (available online for about $5 for a small jar) or a handful of small paper clips.
Step 1: Place the magnet flat on a table.
Step 2: Lay the paper over the magnet.
Step 3: Sprinkle iron filings (or arrange small paper clips) on top of the paper.
Step 4: Watch the pattern form. The filings arrange themselves along the invisible magnetic field lines, a perfect map of a force you can't see.
What your child will discover: you can't see magnetism. But you can see what magnetism does. That's the entire basis of how scientists study invisible things: they measure effects. Curie did the same thing with radiation, building instruments sensitive enough to detect its effects on surrounding materials.
Safety note: keep iron filings away from eyes and clean up carefully. Small paper clips work as a safer substitute for very young kids and give a similar visual effect for kids science at home.
How to make experiments stick
Running the experiment is the middle part. Two quick things before and after turn a ten-minute activity into something your kid actually remembers.
Tell them the inventor's story first. Even just two or three sentences: "This guy named Newton kept watching things fall and couldn't figure out why everything fell at the same speed. He spent years on it. Let's see if we can figure out what he figured out." That's it. Now they have a reason to care about the result.
Ask one question before you start: "What do you think will happen?" Don't tell them. Let them predict. A wrong prediction is better than no prediction, because it makes the result surprising.
After the experiment, ask "What surprised you?" Not "What did you learn?" That sounds like a quiz. "What surprised you?" is an invitation. If the answer is nothing, ask what they'd change about the experiment to make it do something different. That's the next experiment.
If you're looking for a read-aloud that pairs naturally with the Newton experiment, the Isaac Newton picture book from History's Heroes is the place to start. Find the Isaac Newton picture book here → Kids who've heard the story come to the experiment with the question already in their minds, which makes the result land differently.
Where the story starts for your budding scientist
Every famous inventor started the same way your child started this afternoon: by noticing something and asking why.
Newton noticed things falling. Archimedes noticed the water rising in his bath. The Wright brothers noticed birds and couldn't stop wondering how they stayed up. Curie noticed something strange happening around uranium and couldn't let it go.
The experiments above don't produce future scientists. That's not the point. The point is to show your child that science isn't a subject. It's what happens when you take your curiosity seriously enough to test it.
Famous inventor experiments work because they put your child in the same position the inventor was in: holding the question, running the test, watching what happens. Not following instructions in a textbook. Actually wondering.
The Isaac Newton picture book is where we start at History's Heroes, because Newton is one of those rare figures whose curiosity is contagious even at age five. Pick it up, read it together the night before, then head to the kitchen table. Find the Isaac Newton picture book here → That's the best start to a curious afternoon we know.