Fake Batteries

Fake battery spacers.
Yellow’s a fun color!

What to do when a battery-powered device would function better with fewer batteries? In our case, a dead-simple DC motor that gives better results when operating at 4.5 V instead of 6 V – but the holder that completes the circuit is sized for four AA batteries.

The answer: a battery-shaped slug of aluminum, which happily conducts current, fits in the place of a functional battery, and has some adorable bright-yellow heat-shrink tubing to stand out! Mostly because bright colors are easier to identify when you drop something on the floor. Round things have a habit of rolling off of surfaces at inopportune times.

Desk Toys

Floating magnet desk toy.
It spins! It floats!

Ah, physics. Where we have an eclectic assortment of desk toys and mostly-useless gimmicky trinkets because their very nature, the quirks of physics they embody, are helpful explainers of scientific principles.

And while their appeal is typically short-lived – how many times before the levitating magnet loses its novelty? – that ooh! factor only needs to work the first time.