Lab Tours for 2026
Lab tours give students a look at STEM research happening at Cornell. Students will visit active laboratory spaces and learn directly from researchers.
Lab Tours Available for All Grades (7th-10th)
1. Marine invertebrate biodiversity
Biology: Evolution
They may be squishy, but they are so much more than that! Invertebrates lack bones and yet they make up 99% of all animal species on the planet. How did they get so diverse? Come explore the ocean's invertebrate bounty with us. You will learn what a jellyfish and a coral have in common (here's a hint: they both sting!) and what types of experiments we can do to understand how these animals have become so different.
2. Powering up plasmas!
Physics: Plasma Physics & High Energy Density Physics
What happens if you squeeze an enormous amount of electrical power into a tiny space for just billionths of a second? Welcome to the Cornell Laboratory of Plasma Studies! In this lab tour, students will explore how scientists use extreme bursts of energy to create and study plasmas—the fourth state of matter and the stuff that makes up stars, lightning, and fusion reactors.
3. Lots and Lots of Robots!
Bio-inspired Robotics: Robots and Insects
Come learn how swarms of robots, inspired by social insects, can coordinate to accomplish extraordinary feats. We'll explore how simple individuals working together at both micro- and macro-scales can track sources in turbulent environments, do formation control, build structures, and help clean waterways. Along the way, we'll showcase real examples, including robotic construction crews and autonomous boats for microplastics cleanup to illustrate how collective embodied intelligence is shaping the future of robotics.
4. Ovary Observatory
Nutrition: Reproductive Health
What can scientists learn about health by looking at the ovary? In this lab tour, students will discover what ovarian morphology is and how researchers use ultrasound imaging to study the ovary. Through hands-on activities—including using muffins as model ovaries—students will learn how ovarian structure can provide insights into hormones, nutrition, metabolism, and overall reproductive health.
5. Explore Space Without Leaving Earth
Physics: Astronomy
Humans have yet to venture further than the Moon, our cosmic next-door neighbor. But fully robotic spacecraft have made it over 60,000 times further, two of them leaving the Solar System entirely. How are we able to go so far and learn so much without leaving the Earth, or even our homes? Find out in this hands-on tour of the Spacecraft Planetary Image Facility, including a visit to Mars in VR, feeling the pull of gravity on other worlds, and cooking up a homemade comet. You'll also get to touch meteorites and learn how to hunt for them in your own backyard!
6. How to Discover New Catalytic Reactions
Chemistry: Organic
Ever wonder how we make many of our everyday products, such as skincare, plastics, and medicines? Chemists perform reactions to make them, often using catalysts to speed up or "turn on" the reactions. However, many catalysts are sensitive to our atmosphere, so in this tour we will learn how chemists run reactions while excluding water and oxygen. We will also see the instruments that are used to analyze and purify reaction products.
7. X-rays: seeing the invisible
Chemistry, Materials Science, Physics, Biology
Have you ever had an x-ray at the dentist or doctor's office? X-rays let us see inside all kinds of things – just like a doctor might use x-rays to look at a broken bone, scientists can use x-rays to see inside proteins, batteries, airplane parts, and more. Come visit Cornell's particle accelerator and learn how we make super-bright x-ray beams and use them to study all of these!
8. How Not to Eat Fungicides and Other Lessons From Mass Spectrometry
Chemistry: Instrumental Analysis
Why does your hair feel oily? Why does soap dry your skin? Why do peppers taste hot? It's all chemicals! Chemicals get a bad rep, but you are made of chemicals, covered in chemicals, and eat, drink and breathe chemicals. During this tour, you will use an instrument called a mass spectrometer to look for interesting ones from everyday objects and even your own body.
9. Lighting Up with Colorful Perovskites
Chemistry: Nanoscience
Have you ever wondered how screens and LED lights make such bright colors? In this workshop, you'll meet tiny glowing particles called perovskites and see how they can shine red, green, blue, and many shades in between by changing what is mixed in. You'll watch colorful liquids and thin films light up and try simple tools that "read" light. Then you will see how a thin film becomes part of a real LED that turns on and glows, linking what happens in the lab to the tech you use every day.
10. Cosmology Lab Tour
Physics: Cosmology
Do you want to learn more about the work that goes into a telescope before it even begins looking at the sky? In this tour, you will learn about the day-to-day research done by experimental cosmologists and how the detectors and instrumentation we are testing in the lab at Cornell will soon be deployed on a real telescope in the Atacama Desert in Chile. You will see and learn about the various types of equipment we use for testing and how these tools help us learn more about our universe!
11. From Metals to Alloys
Material Science: Synthesis and Characterizations
Have you ever wondered how metals are turned from raw materials into solid alloys used in engineering and technology? In this lab tour, we will introduce how metals are synthesized into bulk materials using a variety of processing methods. You will see different synthesis techniques, from ball milling and powder metallurgy to arc melting and traditional melting methods. We will also show the equipment used to test the strength of the synthesized alloys under different conditions, giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how materials are synthesized and tested in our EM3 materials science lab.
12. Neurons in Action: Recording from the Living (Mouse) Brain
Neuroscience: Two-photon Microscopy, Extracellular Electrophysiology, Mouse Animal Model
Come get an inside look at how scientists study the brain! You'll learn how neurons (brain cells) communicate and how neuroscientists record brain activity in real time. We'll show you a powerful microscope that lets us see glowing brain cells as they become active, and introduce you to advanced tools that we use to record electrical signals from many neurons at once. You'll see real brain data and learn how scientists use it to unlock the mysteries of how the brain works.
13. Microstructural Evolution under Impact with Lego Blocks
Material Science: Metals
The microstructure of metals has highly ordered building blocks, just like Legos! When we try to deform a piece of metal, the building blocks need to move around but they don't always collaborate. These building blocks are known as "lattice structures", and groups of lattices can be arranged in different orientations known as "grains". Let's use Lego blocks to build up crystals and grains and see how they correspond when we try to "deform" the outline shapes!
14. Fashion Meets Future Tech
Fashion Technology: 3D Body Scanning and Digital Design
Fashion is not just about style. It is also about science and technology. In this tour, you will step inside a high-tech apparel lab to see how 3D body scanners work. You will learn how designers use digital models of real bodies to create clothing that fits better, moves better, and is more inclusive. You will also discover how STEM skills help shape the clothes of the future!
15. My Amazing Brain: A tour of the Cornell MRI facility
Psychology, Neuroscience: Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neuroscience
Have you ever wondered what your brain looks like while still inside your head, or how scientists and doctors look at the brain to make diagnoses or understand brain health? In this tour, students watch an MRI scan in real time, make predictions about what the brain and brain activity will look like, and compare their drawings to actual MRI images. They’ll learn how MRI helps neuroscientists understand thinking, feeling, and sensing, and how the brain connects to their everyday lives.
16. Our Actions and Brain Activity: Exploring the EEG facility
Neuroscience, Psychology: Electroencephalogram, Brain activity and behavior
Have you ever wondered what your brain is doing when you’re studying, sleeping, focusing, or feeling strong emotions? In this EEG-based lab tour, students explore how electrical signals reveal our brain states during different behaviors and moods. Students will watch a live EEG setup where scientists measure brain activity, make predictions, and compare their ideas about what the brain is doing to real electrical activity patterns recorded in real time. No prior knowledge required.
Lab Tours for 9th and 10th Graders Only
17. Exploring Light & Matter: Inside the Laser Lab
Physical Chemistry: Optical Spectroscopy
Did you know that white light from everyday sources, like light bulbs, the sun, or mobile phone screens, contain hidden colors? In this tour, you'll uncover these "invisible rainbows" through spectroscopy—a tool scientists use to split white light into its colorful spectrum. We can use this tool to investigate what wavelengths of light a material absorbs and emits. Come visit our lab to see how we play with lasers to uncover the secrets of molecules!