If you’ve ever searched YouTube in a hunt for the next great science fair project, you may have come across this creative kid, Aiden of Whiz Kid Science. Aiden’s videos are fun and simple, featuring projects that any kid can do with very little except for a few household items like eggs or food coloring.

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The first question I asked Aiden was where he got the inspiration to record his science experiments and post them online. His response was pretty straightforward. “I wanted to earn some money. At first I wanted to get a paper route, but my mom said no because she said she’d be the one delivering the papers.” His first video was a science fair classic we can all recall—a baking soda and vinegar volcano.

In the three years since starting Whiz Kid Science, Aiden has posted dozens of his science experiment tutorials on YouTube and gained a following of over 60,000 subscribers. Ironically, Aiden’s school doesn’t hold an annual science fair, but he does enjoy sharing his channel with his teachers and sometimes they get to watch them in class.

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is becoming an increasingly focal point in education, but many students still struggle with these subjects because they’re worried about getting the wrong answer or missing a step in an equation. Aiden’s advice to kids who are apprehensive about the hard sciences was very insightful:

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“My favourite part about science is the experiments because I get to learn while doing something fun. Sometimes experiments go wrong or don’t go the way you thought they would but that’s why they are called experiments. You can try again doing something differently,” he said. “I would tell kids that it’s ok to mess up or be wrong because I’ve done it lots of times. I’m sure scientists and inventors did not get it right the first time.”

And he’s right. Thomas Edison, for example, made more than 1,000 attempts before inventing the first commercially viable light bulb. While Aiden and his film crew (also known as his family) usually film an experiment on the first try, you can see some of his experiments that didn’t go exactly as expected on his channel.

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