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Our own interactive demos and games, plus hand-picked science websites and channels for students, teachers, and curious families.

By Science Playground

  • Photo cards from the books: a red panda in Langtang, the Pillars of Creation, a danphe, comet Hale-Bopp, rhinos in Chitwan, a thermite reaction, lali gurans and the Perseverance rover on Mars
    Photos: Sunuwargr (CC BY-SA 4.0); NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Pratap Gurung (CC BY-SA 4.0); E. Kolmhofer, H. Raab (CC BY-SA 3.0); Aditya Pal (CC BY-SA 4.0); Nikthestunned (CC BY-SA 3.0); Ananda Raj Devkota (CC BY-SA 3.0); NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Wikimedia Commons.

    Science, Explained

    Science Playground

    Nepal’s school science curriculum as interactive books, one for each grade: every unit said clearly, worked examples and exercises with answers to open when you’re ready, labelled diagrams, things to play with, and the stories and surprises textbooks leave out. For students with any science book.

    Open Science, Explained
  • An interactive diagram of white light fanning out into colors through a glass prism

    Optics: Interactive Demos

    Science Playground

    Thirteen hands-on diagrams of how light behaves: mirrors and a kaleidoscope, refraction, total internal reflection, lenses, the pinhole and single-lens camera, prisms, and rainbows. Move the light, the mirrors and the lenses and watch what happens, then read the science behind it.

    Open Optics: Interactive Demos
  • Four illusions: two orange circles of the same size that look different, an impossible triangle, a spiral made of circles, and a picture that is both a duck and a rabbit
    Images: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

    Optical Illusions

    Science Playground, with pictures from Wikimedia Commons

    More than 170 optical illusions, from circles that change size and straight lines that bend to impossible objects, pictures that move when nothing moves, and mirages in the real world. Each one says what to look for, and why your brain is fooled.

    Open Optical Illusions
  • A map of Nepal marking famous lakes, peaks, waterfalls, and temples

    77 Districts: Nepal Map Game

    Science Playground

    Learn Nepal on an interactive map: all 77 districts, and 71 famous lakes, peaks, waterfalls, and temples. Then test yourself in six game modes, from finding a district by its shape to pinpointing a landmark or naming the district it’s in.

    Open 77 Districts: Nepal Map Game
  • A globe centred on Nepal, with the names of the countries of Asia, Africa, and Europe

    Our World

    Science Playground

    Every map of the world is drawn from somewhere, and this one is drawn from Nepal. Start in Kathmandu and look outward: how far away the rest of the world is, what time it is there right now, how big other countries really are, where the Earth is highest, deepest and hottest, and what lies straight through the ground beneath your feet. One round planet, 195 countries, and our small place among them, with games at the end to see how much of it you know.

    Open Our World
  • The evening sky to the south-west of Science Playground: the constellation figures of Sagittarius, Capricornus, and Aquila above the dark ridge of the hills, with the Milky Way rising

    Night Sky

    Science Playground, based on Stellarium Web

    A planetarium of the sky above Science Playground. Slide through today and tonight to watch the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars rise and set, trace the constellations with their lines and figures, and switch off the daylight to see the stars that are up in the daytime.

    Open Night Sky
  • The periodic table in soft colors by kind of element, with gold’s card open: its electron shells, where you meet it, and the gilded roofs of Pashupatinath

    Periodic Table of the Elements

    Science Playground

    All 118 elements: where you meet them in everyday life and in Nepal, how they got their names, and what happens when you heat them up. Then play: rebuild the table as a jigsaw, guess an element from clues, compare atomic numbers, and mix atoms into 54 molecules in the Molecule Kitchen.

    Open Periodic Table of the Elements
  • A blackboard with a right triangle labeled त्रिभुज, लम्ब, आधार and कर्ण, a magnet with its उत्तरी ध्रुव and दक्षिणी ध्रुव, and घनत्व = पिण्ड ÷ आयतन, density = mass ÷ volume

    Science and Math in Nepali

    Science Playground

    The Nepali words for science and math, nearly 1,000 of them, the way Nepal’s school textbooks use them: वर्ग for a square, घनत्व for density, गुरुत्वाकर्षण for gravitation. Search in English, Nepali, or Roman letters, see the small pieces the words are built from, and test yourself in the quiz.

    Open Science and Math in Nepali
  • Three gold prize medals ringed with laurel leaves, stamped with an atom, a chemistry flask, and a heart, above Alfred Nobel’s signature

    Nobel Prizes in Science

    Science Playground

    Every Nobel Prize in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine since 1901, with where the discovery shows up in our lives today. Start from something you use, like your phone, a vaccine, or an LED bulb, and find the prizes behind it, or look for prizes linked to Nepal, women laureates, and the people the prizes left out.

    Open Nobel Prizes in Science
  • Four pictures from the timelines: Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, the Wright brothers’ first flight, two women programming the ENIAC computer, and Tiktaalik crawling out of the water

    Timelines

    Science Playground

    Four timelines that fit together: Deep Time, from the Big Bang to the end of the last Ice Age; Science, the discoveries from the round Earth to CRISPR; Inventions, from stone tools to chatbots, with the ancestors of the things you use every day; and Scientists, from Aryabhata to Marie Curie and Sanduk Ruit, with who else was alive at the same time.

    Open Timelines
  • Wooden letter tiles scattered on a wooden table

    Beyond Science

    Science Playground

    Not science, but ours, and useful to every student: Nepali Words from Nepal’s textbooks, English Vocabulary from everyday English to the SAT and GRE, and English Grammar practice in the style of the TOEFL.

    Open Beyond Science

External websites

  • A plate of springs, clothespins, rubber bands, and string beside scissors, pliers, and a screwdriver
    Image: Exploratorium

    Science Snacks

    Exploratorium, San Francisco

    Science Playground was inspired by the Exploratorium. Its Science Snacks are 300+ hands-on activities, many of them classroom-sized versions of its exhibits, that teachers and students can build from common, inexpensive materials, each with step-by-step instructions and an explanation of the science.

    Open Science Snacks (opens Exploratorium in a new tab)
  • A student at a laptop running a PhET simulation of a roller coaster track
    Image: PhET Interactive Simulations, University of Colorado Boulder

    PhET Interactive Simulations

    University of Colorado Boulder

    More than 100 free simulations in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and math. Swing a pendulum, build a circuit, or rub a balloon on a sweater and watch the charges move, changing one thing at a time to see what happens. Each one is designed from research on how students learn, and tested with students before it’s released.

    Open PhET Interactive Simulations (opens University of Colorado Boulder in a new tab)
  • A virtual lab bench in LabXchange’s gel electrophoresis simulation, with pipettes, a power supply and a gel box
    Image: LabXchange

    LabXchange

    Harvard University, with the Amgen Foundation

    A free science library from Harvard, with thousands of simulations and interactives. Its best are virtual labs: step up to a lab bench to pipette, run a gel, or put a new gene into bacteria, following the protocol and seeing your own results, the way scientists do it. Everything opens without an account; most of it is biology, and the virtual labs work best on a computer.

    Open LabXchange (opens Harvard University in a new tab)
  • Saturn and its rings in NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, with the orbits of its moons
    Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    Explore with NASA

    NASA, collected by Science Playground

    NASA’s free simulations and live trackers on one page: fly through the solar system with real spacecraft, explore maps of the Moon and Mars, watch the Sun and the antennas that talk to spacecraft, and design a wing or a rocket.

    Open Explore with NASA
  • Six title cards from neal.fun: Constellation Draw, Size of Life, Space Elevator, Asteroid Launcher, The Deep Sea, and The Size of Space
    Image: neal.fun

    neal.fun

    Neal Agarwal, picked by Science Playground

    Neal Agarwal makes playful, beautifully made pages for the web. These are the ones about science: zoom out from an astronaut to the biggest stars, scroll down to the deepest part of the ocean, see every kind of living thing to scale, launch an asteroid, and draw constellations of your own.

    Open neal.fun
  • A periodic table with each element colored by where it was made: the Big Bang, dying stars, exploding stars, or merging neutron stars
    Image: Cmglee, CC BY-SA 3.0

    Periodic Tables Online

    Picked by Science Playground

    The best periodic tables on the web, in one place: the story and data of every element, photos of a sample of each, and tables that show where the elements come from and which ones are running out.

    Open Periodic Tables Online
  • An animated astronaut floating in space on a tether, from a TED-Ed lesson
    Image: TED-Ed

    TED-Ed Lessons: Science and Math

    TED-Ed

    Short animated lessons that answer big questions in science and math: why the sky is blue, how vaccines work, what infinity really means. Each one comes with a quiz, discussion questions, and links to dig deeper, so it works for a classroom or on your own.

    Open TED-Ed Lessons: Science and Math (opens TED-Ed in a new tab)
  • A fan-shaped tree of life branching from bacteria to plants, fungi, fish, birds, and mammals over 4 billion years
    Image: Evogeneao

    Tree of Life Explorer

    Evogeneao

    An interactive tree of life: tap any animal, from humans and chimpanzees to octopuses and sea stars, and see how it is related to the others and how long ago they shared an ancestor. Every living thing is a distant cousin of every other.

    Open Tree of Life Explorer (opens Evogeneao in a new tab)
  • A globe of Europe and North Africa covered in green dots, each one a live radio station
    Image: Radio Garden

    Radio Garden

    Radio Garden, the Netherlands

    Spin a globe covered in thousands of green dots, each one a radio station broadcasting live, and listen to any of them. It opens on Kathmandu’s stations; from there, travel the world by ear: the music people listen to, the languages they speak, and the news they care about, from a breakfast show in New York while it’s evening here to festival songs in Brazil and folk music across the Himalaya.

    Open Radio Garden (opens Radio Garden in a new tab)
  • A colorful globe of the world on a table

    You May Also Like

    Picked by Science Playground

    More good things for curious minds, and a list we keep adding to.

    Open You May Also Like

These links go to other websites. We choose them carefully but don’t control their content.