Science Fair project

June 5, 2006 7:14 PM

Help me think of an amazing science fair project!

I have amazing teachers who help us arrange any technical instrumentation or research material we need, like for genetic projects or NASA projects. They give us excellent guidance and timelines so that we can perfect our research and our presentations and even our speaking style before we enter into regionals. It's not errupting volcano type science. It's wwwaaaay past that. They don't tell us what projects to do, nor do they do them for us. Most kids start conducting some of their research over the summer and then fill out the application to apply for science fair in the fall. I LOVE all of science... I'm into anything scientific which is kind of the problem. I'm having a hard time narrowing things down. Any of you science-types out there have any good ideas? Stuff you always wished you had gotten around to doing? The sky is the limit! Thanks!

posted by FeistyFerret to science & nature (18 comments total)

Want to impress people, get a free ride to college, and have good employment for life? Grow some oil-heavy algae and make biodiesel out of it.
posted by b1tr0t at 7:17 PM on June 5, 2006

Somewhat longer report.
posted by b1tr0t at 7:29 PM on June 5, 2006

I used to be a science fair judge. Two projects I recall as outstanding:

1) A student ran an experiment to determine the purpose of every ingredient in a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. She made the standard recipe with N ingredients, and repeated it N times with one of the ingredients missing (a different one each time, naturally). As I recall flour was a really important ingredient, vanilla less so.

2) Another student did bacteriological tests on money by innoculating agar cultures from swabbed bills and coins. She got samples of money from many different sources: fast food restaurants, banks, stores, friends, and straight from the Fed. I remember well the conclusion: money does not harbor bacteria. She won first prize.

I also remember a little boy, no more than seven or eight years old, who did a project on magnets. He just got a bunch of different types of magnets, placed them in different configurations, and measured things like how close he could push them together. He developed a very interesting theory about magnetism, totally incorrect, but completely consistent with his observations. He won first prize in his age category.

When I was in high school, a girl in my class won what was then the Westinghouse Science Talent Search by twisting Slinkys and seeing how they kink. Turned out to have some relevance to DNA. It resulted in a scientific publication ("Supercoiling in Regular Alpha Helices") and a full scholarship to MIT.
posted by Wet Spot at 8:02 PM on June 5, 2006

Well, I did science fairs in high school (and ended up a semi-finalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and one of many 3rd(?) places at the International Science and Engineering Fair), so besides knowing what I did, I saw a lot of projects. The ones that did well were really original research in some way, and at the high school level, Wet Spot's suggestions (other than the Slinky thing) probably won't get you too far.

I would recommend picking a field of interest to you (alternative energy technologies? biology?) and then trying to find a problem you can explore. I would highly recommend the physical sciences for H.S. and trying to do something where the results are unambiguous. Having guidance (perhaps from a graduate student or a professor at a nearby university) can be quite helpful; you might ask your teachers if they have connections.

Pick up a few issues of Scientific American at the library and figure out which articles fascinate you the most to get a general guideline as to what general field to consider.

I don't know if these suggestions are helpful, but if you'd like more, feel free to email me and I'll try and help however I can.

For what it's worth, doing science fair in H.S. can help you get into college (and be financially lucrative; there's lots of cash prizes), but more than that, it can help you decide if you're interested in a career in science. Being involved with research at a university is especially helpful; very little "real world" research is done completely individually.
posted by JMOZ at 8:25 PM on June 5, 2006

This site, despite its banal URL, has some amazing things you can do as a science project, many of which will actually contribute to the body of scientific knowledge.
posted by greatgefilte at 8:39 PM on June 5, 2006

Impress your teachers!? That's EASY, build yourself a railgun. That way, if you end up getting a bad grade...
posted by Sabrick at 8:50 PM on June 5, 2006

Build a Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor. You can be the kid at the science fair with a bottled sun. When people ask what it is, just tell them the truth. It's a fusion reactor.

It's actually possible for a hobbiest to build too and doesn't require any parts that require special licenses or anything.
posted by lockle at 9:21 PM on June 5, 2006

I always loved this
posted by 4ster at 9:30 PM on June 5, 2006

whoa..you guys totally rock. I am lovin' all the stuff you are posting. I'll never get to bed tonight!!! ha ha.
posted by FeistyFerret at 9:48 PM on June 5, 2006

Not to discurage your scientific pursiuts, the Farnsworth Fusor is not entirely benign--high voltages and neutrons, from what I have seen, are involved.

I would definately talk to some professors or graduate students at your local univ. in the areas you're interested in for potential short-term research projects that you could use for your science fair.
posted by scalespace at 9:49 PM on June 5, 2006

Mmm don't worry. My mom would have a cow if I built a fusor. She's never mentioned it, but I'm pretty sure she has rules about keeping a fusor in my room. Just a guess. But I LOVED reading about it! Ha ha.
posted by FeistyFerret at 9:52 PM on June 5, 2006

1) A student ran an experiment to determine the purpose of every ingredient in a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. She made the standard recipe with N ingredients, and repeated it N times with one of the ingredients missing (a different one each time, naturally). As I recall flour was a really important ingredient, vanilla less so.

I did the same thing in high school, but I made cakes instead. It was an awesome project.
posted by disaster77 at 9:53 PM on June 5, 2006

Ha! My parents would've flipped if they knew half the things my brothers and I cooked up in the basement! I told my dad about one of them 20 years afterwards and he went white as a sheet. Heh.

As to science fair, the best approaches mimic that of product development or scientific research. Start with a problem or a question and solve/answer it.

For example:
Are hybrid vehicles cost effective?
How do I put solar power back into the grid?
Is a dog's mouth cleaner than a humans?

Another approach is just to learn how to do something that most people don't normally do and figure out how to apply it.
If you're interested in biology, you might try your hand at learning how to do DNA analysis - which can come in handy in a number of other experiments/applications.

If you're interested in electronics, learn how to make your own circuit boards (it's not that hard - but don't dump the leftover etchant down the slop sink in the basement or it will eat holes through the copper pipes and your dad will flip).

If you're interested in manufacturing, learn how to do modling and casting. It's straightforward to make your own vacuform/thermoform system. With some thought and design you can make your own injection molding system too. That's particularly science fair worthy, because you can tie it into recycling (ie, how many times can you recycle a milk jug?)

Want to work in metals? Do lost wax? You can melt metal in a microwave, which is one step away from doing lost wax.

Raise giant silk moths and figure out what effects the host food has on the adult (many species of saturnidae will eat a half dozen or so different foods), or try to figure out why causes color variance in luna moths.

How does the variety of yeast, including wild yeast affect bread?

I could go on all day, and I haven't even gotten to explosives...
posted by plinth at 6:04 AM on June 6, 2006

You want to work on something that can translate into a practical application -- like a technology to make biodiesel more effecient, or a way to make iPod/laptop batteries last longer. I researched piezoelectric crystals and thought they had some very cool possibilities. Plus, they're cheap to acquire and easy to work with in a lab setting.
posted by junkbox at 6:28 AM on June 6, 2006

No Biology ideas, so far. How about a variant of the Ames test, but using different radiation sources, such as a fluorescent bulb, a cell phone, wifi card, bluetooth, UV lamp.

It would be pretty easy to set up, wouldn't be too expensive, and would be totally safe because the bacteria you can get isn't infectious. Get some bacteria mutated in a gene that allows growth in medium lacking some amino acid or sugar. Expose the bugs to the radiation sources and look for revertants.

Provided you don't live in Kansas, you could expose some bacteria to different concentrations of antibiotics, then take the cultures that weren't killed in the first treatment and treat each surviving culture with the same spread of concentrations of antibiotics. What happened to the dose/response relationship?
posted by Mr. Gunn at 5:36 PM on June 7, 2006

How about something psychological?

I've been wondering lately about the almost self-healing properties of some things - for instance, if you scoop a portion out of a jar of condensed milk, it "heals" itself in a way that makes it look like nothing happened to it. Is there a practical application for that? Maybe that could spark an idea.

My sister was in a Science Commnications course and part of the course involved doing a scientific radio show. Her group's project was "The Science of a Night Out" - the effect of disco noise levels, the components of alcohol and how they affect a person, something about smoke too. You could do something similar - "The Science of School" (chalk fumes in lungs? Bathroom cleanliness?), "The Science of Shopping Malls", "The Science of Dating" (chemistry in action!), and so on.

(urgh, I'd always get random ideas for scientific experiments. This would be the perfect time to let those ideas out...but now I can't really remember any of them.)
posted by divabat at 1:27 AM on June 8, 2006

Keep them coming you guys. I'm reading all of this and looking EVERYTHING up for possibilities and options. You are all really great for offering so many good ideas. Divabat, if your random ideas start coming again, please post! Thanks you everyone. Really. I'm humbled.
posted by FeistyFerret at 10:15 PM on June 8, 2006

My only excuse: I got hungry.

You know how there's condensed milk and evaporated milk sold in cans? Try making them manually - as in literally condensing and evaporating milk. Heck you could even try to demonstrate the changes in forms of matter (solid -> liquid -> gas and vice versa) using milk and see what happens.

Why are there so many strange ingredients in processed food?

Try making something using an unusual substitute. One guy made a cake with creme eggs instead of real eggs. You could try all those "egg substitute" and "butter substitute" and what not - make a whole recipe out of those things - and see what happens. Is it any healthier?

I'd imagine you can get a lot of ideas from food. There are luxury restaurants dedicated to this.
posted by divabat at 4:22 AM on June 10, 2006