Hello!
For the World Children's Day festival you put on a great show. My daughter, age 4, was completely fascinated. She participated in the creation of a coaster out of a yoghurt cup. We'd love to incorporate this idea into our next daycare party. Could you tell me where to get those cups?
Susanne B., 7^th October, 2008

Of course. You can take any cup that is made out of polystyrene. On they bottom, they all have the abbreviation PS in the arrow-triangle as the sign for recycling. An example for these would be plastic party cups.
I've been getting the plain 0.5-litre cups for my Experiments Shows from the company Uniplast Knauer in Bad Laasphe, Germany, for quite a few years now. They are also willing to sell the cups in “smaller” numbers to private individuals who would like to use them for “cup shrinking”. You can find the order form here:
 order form „cup shrinking“ (20.4 kB)
You can find the instructions for the experiment and more information on this page. Good luck with the cup shrinking!
Joachim Hecker

All the time, I'm asked how I turn a bucket of water into a bucket of snow. The powder that I put into the water is a so-called superabsorbent polymer which can absorb a lot of water. Thus it's a swelling synthetic. Unlike the superabsorbent polymer in nappies which swells pretty slowly in order to distribute the liquid evenly, the superabsorbent polymer for artificial snow swells really quickly. Oh, where do I get it? I get my “Instant Snow” from here: www.buxtehuderzauberkeller.de. The powder isn't exactly cheap, but 1 heaped teaspoon suffices for about 0.2 litres of water. Have fun with “true fake snow”!

The «match rockets» are one of the most difficult experiments. Trainees of the German worldwide radio «Deutschen Welle» (DW) show in their film, how to deal with:


© 2009 DW/ Ricarda Otte & Nina Funke-Kaiser.

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