Super-absorbant Gels
Polyacrylamide crystals can absorb over forty times their weight in water and also have interesting optical properties. Students enjoy seeing and learning about their surprising behavior.
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Television Stone
Experiment with the optical properties of interesting crystals that bend light, such as the “television stone”, Ulexite. When viewed through the television stone, newspaper print appears to be displayed on the stone surface, like on a television, for which the stone is named.
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Diffraction Grating Glasses
Glasses with a diffraction grating lens can be used as a fun tool for visual and inexpensive experiments about light. Students of all ages can learn about how light from different sources is composed of different wavelengths. For older students this item can be used as part of a more sophisticated lesson in light physics.
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Coffee Cans
Empty cans, such as recycled coffee cans, are versatile, free and easy to find tools for a science classroom. They can be used for a number of experiments – in these videos we make a sound wave oscilloscope, a pinhole viewer (by putting two cans together), displacement cylinders, an air cannon and a space suit simulator. For more ideas, take a look at this article called “Science in a Can”.
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Pipe Clamps
Pipe clamps are quite inexpensive, durable, easily fitted into different sizes, and are an excellent way to attach lab sensors and fix lab tools into positions that can be held stable for long periods of time. A collection of the clamps in all sizes is useful to pre-engineer experiments.
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Carbon Dioxide Source 
A water seltzer or bicycle pump with a carbon dioxide cylinder inside is a great source of pressurized carbon dioxide that can be used to demonstrate countless different ideas.
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Hovercraft
A round hovercraft toy like this one here is a fun way to teach about friction and forces, angular momentum and other ideas open to your imagination.
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LED Light
LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) come in all colors in the visible, UV and infrared spectrum. They are very inexpensive and also very small and lightweight, yet they produce a relatively intense source of light. A broad spectrum (white) LED, such as this one on a bendable antenna is a very useful item.
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Budget Bunsen Burner
If you are designing a school science lab, you may elect to work with a class set of mounted butane torches or some commercial butane burner and eliminate the expense installing, maintaining and securing gas lines. These options offer a safe, much less expensive source of concentrated heat.
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Bending Glass
Using the butane torch we recommended earlier, you can make your own custom-made glassware for experiments like fractional distillation.
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Colored Tape
Electrical tape comes in many different colors and is great for labeling kids projects and coding things around the classroom.
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