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GLASGOW Science Centre launched GSC At Home last week so that people of all ages could learn about and enjoy science while indoors: the team puts new science online every day at 10am. Steve Owens, from the Glasgow Science Centre, describes some of the fantastic experiments that people are trying at home.

Every day at 10am the team at Glasgow Science Centre is bringing science into your home.

Do you fancy making your own lava lamp? It’s easy!

You need a clear container (a glass will do), tap water, cooking oil or baby oil, a tiny splash of food colouring and a fizzy tablet like alka-seltzer or effervescent vitamins. Pour the water into your glass until it’s about one quarter full, and then slowly and carefully pour oil on top of the water until the glass is almost full. You’ll notice the oil and the water don’t mix: oil is less dense than water so it floats on top, making two separate layers. Use a straw or a spoon to drop some food colouring into the glass and wait until it mixes with the water.

Now comes the fun bit. Drop in small pieces of your fizzy tablet and wait until the bubbles begin to rise from the coloured water, making colourful blobs that rise and sink. You can see our lava lamp, and those made by people across Scotland and the world on the Glasgow Science Centre Facebook page.

This week we took people on a video tour of our Question of Perception gallery. One of the most popular – and mind-bending – illusions in the science centre is the Wacky Salon.

Our Wacky Salon throws off your balance completely, thanks to a clever combination of angles and decoration. Your sense of balance comes from a variety of sources, including your visual system, which looks to see what direction is up, and your vestibular system (including your inner ear) which senses which direction gravity is pulling in.

In the Wacky Salon these two senses tell your brain different things. Your eyes tell you that “up” is in line with the walls and wallpaper, but your inner ear tells you the real “up” is in a different direction. The sensation of walking through the Wacky Salon is very disconcerting –

I can barely do it without falling over – and is a great way of showing how your brain can be fooled.

Our latest video, released today, features Mars. We take you on a tour of a model of the surface of Mars, visiting some of the stunning surface features. The Valles Marineris, or Mariner Valley, is a huge system of canyons on the surface of Mars more than 2500 miles long and five miles deep, while Olympus Mons is the solar system’s largest volcano, almost three times taller than Mount Everest, with a base the size of France.

Mars is visible to the naked eye but you’ll have to get up very early and be very lucky to see it. It rises along with Jupiter and Saturn around 0430, and will stay low on the horizon in the south-east until sunrise. You might have spotted another planet in the sky in the evening. That super bright “star” you might have seen once the sun goes down… that’s actually Venus. Have a look for it tonight, or the next night it’s clear.

In these confusing times we hope that our little splashes of science help to brighten your day. You can find all of our videos, and new ones every day, on our Facebook page or by by searching the hashtag #GSCAtHome