Wham! The balloons burst one after the other in the hands of the children assembled at the ‘Alice in Scienceland’ workshop at the ongoing 40th edition of Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF).

Each young attendee was given a balloon, which they had to blow into as much as possible. Then they were asked to squeeze lemon juice over the inflated balloons, which made them explode. Startled for a moment the kids may have been, but they were immensely excited to be part of an experiment.

It was indeed a wonderland of Science for young children at a workshop conducted by Comme il Faut. Children over 10partook in an exciting session where they got to see scientific experiments that explain different phenomena such as force of gravity and diffusion.

In the next experiment, workshop trainers Jacob and Di showed them how to balance a heavy book atop two A4-size sheets of paper rolled like cylinders in order to explain gravity and geometrical shapes, while demonstrating how they could levitate objects in the air using a balloon. Next, they explained diffusion by sprinkling pepper powder in a water-filled plate; when the children applied liquid soap on their finger and dipped it in the water, they saw the pepper receding to one side, making the water clear.

Peppered with readings from the Mark Twain’s book Alice in Wonderland, the trainers tried to make science fun by explaining the mystery behind the subject. To further entertain the kids, trainer Morris played some monkey pranks throughout. As a bonus, they made the last experiment a magical trick to count the number of dots on either side of a card.