Diffusion

This user gave 4/5 stars

The jelly marbles work great for showing diffusion through a semi permeable membrane. I put a drop of food coloring into a beaker along with a hydrated jelly marble. The food coloring will diffuse into the marble. Then you place the marble in a beaker with clear water. Watch as the water turns the color of the food coloring. Also, after hydrating the jelly marbles place a few of them in a beaker of salt water and watch what happens. The water will move down its concentration gradient and the marbles will lose water.

Excellent product, lots of fun!

This user gave 4/5 stars

Love the jelly marbles! They are fun to watch grow and at each stage as they absorb more and more water. The kids loved them...a little too much actually...if you want them to last, don't let kids handle them too much and just have them look at them as these things break pretty easily. At any rate, they are a lot of fun and great for learning about absorption.

Cross curriculum opportunity!

This user gave 5/5 stars

I teach 6th grade science on a team of 4 teachers. It's hard to keep their interest from class to class but these spheres did the trick! I introduced them to our HIstory teacher who used them to demonstrate the concepts of hemispheres by cutting them in half and "axis" by putting a toothpick through them. Moving on to Math class, where we were studying area, circumference, radius, diameter, the math teacher was able to cut them in half and show the relationship of the area to the perimeter of a circle by using spheres rehydrated with colored water and making a stamp on the page of the sphere. In Science class, we explored the properties of super absorbent polymers and measured the progress of their growth to graph. Even the Language Arts teacher got in on the action by having the students write about what would happen if they spheres got loose in the river system nearby! One product brought our whole team together and brought the interest level WAY UP! This is an awesome product!

My favorite product from Steve Spangler Science

This user gave 4/5 stars

THis one made me like science again. Great for pranks and teaching!

Jelly Marbles Review

This user gave 4/5 stars

This is great! The kids love it, and it came very fast. I'm pleased with this service. Thanks!

So much fun!!

This user gave 5/5 stars

These were great! My son was disappointed after seeing a YouTube video claiming to be able to make these with some combination of baking soda/vinegar and some other ingredients. Lo and behold, Steve Spangler to the rescue! Both kids (and let's be honest, both adults too) absolutely had a blast with these. Plenty to go around and a little goes a long way. Thanks!!

Jelly Marbles

This user gave 5/5 stars

I guarantee your kids want be able to keep their hands of these things. They love putting their hands into the water and magically pulling out a hand full of marbles. They seem to last forever too if you keep them in water.

AWESOME

This user gave 4/5 stars

They were so neat. The kids loved them and we used them as "eyeballs" for a mystery halloween game. We also used the atomic glow and they thought that was the best thing ever. I am sending the extras to school for their science teacher to use. You get a decent amount, actually a lot for the price. Very nice and fun to do with the kids. They were checking the growth every hour or so.

Slippery, squishy fun

This user gave 5/5 stars

I'm a children's librarian, and I ordered some products to start a weekend science program. The jelly marbles were on the list, and I dropped a few into a cup of water as soon as I opened the box. A few hours later, it was my favorite thing to show the kids (and coworkers). Dip your hand into what looks like a clear glass a water ... and you feel squishy jellies! Some kids wanted to drop new marbles into the water, others wanted to take a marble home to play with. They were a hit!

Slow... product description a little misleading.

This user gave 1/5 stars

In the product description it says :

Place these tiny, solid spheres in water, and --in just a little while--- you will have your own Jelly Marbles. These superabsorbent marbles are the newest craze around the Spangler Science offices! What starts out as a 3mm pebble, ---quickly--- becomes an approximately 20mm ball of jelly! Similar to our Water Jelly Crystals, these Jelly Marbles absorb a lot of water, plus they maintain their spherical shape when they are done growing. Not only are these superabsorbent marbles fun, they teach a valuable lesson about the power of polymers. In fact, Jelly Marbles are an example of amazing Hydrogels

Firstly it says in just "a little while" then layer "quickly becomes a 20mm ball"

It actually takes an overnight soaking to achieve the full size.
I timed the growtyh and after about 3-4 hours, they were about 6-7 mm..
Bottom line... not effective for a single class demo.. You need to bring the students back the next day for them appreciate the growth effect. Not really "quikly" not a "little while"

With respect, the video of this product does state 3-4 hours... but the product description should really state "overnight soaking required to achieve full size" as one is kind of expecting these to hydrate in about an hour or so.. based on the product description.

If the description had been more telling about the time required, and I was an educator who had more than one day to get kids into science... i would give this product 3 stars...

good

This user gave 5/5 stars

this is soooooo cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)



GO STEVE SPANGLER

This user gave 4/5 stars

Before I called the kids over, I let some of the Jelly Marbles sit in a clear cup for about 4 hours. Then, I had my scientists (ages 10,7, and 3) stick their fingers in the cup. Since the Jelly Marbles expand and become absolutely transparent, imagine their surprise! The 3 yo and 7 yo mixing colors for the Jelly Marbles to absorb. Fun! (Note: the kidlets say that the Jelly Marbles feel like eyeballs. I asked them how they knew what a bowl of eyeballs felt like…..but they’re right. We did several of the activities in the guide, but I think lots of fun was had just by handling the Jelly Marbles, squishing them, and wondering why the heck they disappear in water. Everytime someone went by the bowl, they’d say, “That is so cool.” From an educational viewpoint, there are lots of things to talk about; refraction, movement of water and dye (when you use the included coloring tablets), and then watched amazed as the marbles returned to their original size after drying out over several days. Why

Kids loved this

This user gave 5/5 stars

I got this for my child's birthday party and the kids were amazed to see us pulled the spheres out of the water and then see them disappear into the water when the spheres were placed back into the water. We gave the kids a ziploc bag each which they filled with couple of spheres and some water to bring them home.

Fun in the kiddy pool

This user gave 5/5 stars

Shhh...Don't tell anyone, but I used them with my two year old. He was highly supervised, of course, because I'm that kind of mom. Guess what?!? It's okay to do science with young children. My son LOVED these. He couldn't believe his eyes when we put them in water just before nap time and by the time he woke up, they were huge! Talk about the joy of discovering! I even got a little more crazy and threw a couple in his kiddy pool for him to find. It was a great game. We played this game for hours and it wore him out for a nice long nap.