Posted: 11/1/2008 7:05:40 PM EDT
| I am sponsoring a Science Fair for our local homeschool group. I have a 9 and 7 year old boy and 5 year old girl entering the Fair. Any ideas? Thank you. |
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I have a CD called "The Amateur Scientist," a collection of all of the "Amateur Scientist" articles from Popular Science over the span of about half a century. Lots of good ideas in that book...but only the 9 year old would probably find any that were in his/her ability range. Have you looked for "science fair" books at your local public library? When I worked as a librarian we bought lots of these––often thinking specifically of the homeschoolers. |
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plane, conveyor belt, and selected quotes from an arfcom thread on the tryptic. No No somethings new like compare the 45 to the 9mm http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/ |
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I am sponsoring a Science Fair for our local homeschool group. I have a 9 and 7 year old boy and 5 year old girl entering the Fair. Any ideas? Thank you. We are hs'ing as well. My wife has gotten some pretty good ideas.....I keep telling her to go for the CHEAPEST! I'll try to find this post tomorrow and have her pass any good ideas along. Nick |
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baking soda plus vinigar, in bottle. cork it and watch it shoot. i did that in the 2nd grade, so i was about 7. for the 9yr old try a mix of rust(70% by mass) and Al powder (30% by mass) and a strip of Magnisium. and a torch lighter. Or, pack some mentos in a thin paper tube, drop it into a bottle of coke and quickly put the lid on. When the coke soaks through the paper, the mentos will act as a catylist and release the CO2 from solution. Then throw the bottle onto the pavement cap-first. If you're lucky you'll crack the lid, and the bottle will rocket into the air as much as 30 feet. |
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Thermoelectric power generation. Using the Seebeck effect. Thermoelectric modules are cheap, under $20 and they can generate a good amount of electricity between a heat source and a heat sink. Just keep them under 200 F for safety...ice on the cold side is safe. Should be fine for a 9 year old.
For a 7 year old, growing sugar crystals is great. Experiment with concentration of sugar in the water and crystal growth. Try adding another sugar, like corn syrup, to the solution. Could also use Epsom Salt (magnesuim sulfate). Another fascinating thing with Epsoms Salt is thermal energy storage. This is a hydrated crystal, baking it in the oven for 2 hours at 300 F will dehydrate the crystals. Letting it cool, they will "store" thermal energy indefinitely until water is added! It gets pretty warm, only a few drops of water are needed to make it quite warm. This can be coupled with the thermoelectric generation using this heat to generate electricity! 5 year old girl? Try coloring carnations. Splitting the stem and putting each segment in its own color is great. Food colors. Easy. Explain the effect of xylem and transpiration of the flower...also explains why flowers in water keep longer! |
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for the littel ones, ductape experiments. google it.
for the older ones, i did a thing once about how an asteroid impact reverses the geographic layers of th earth. take a PBJ sandwich and soak it in water in a pan. when its soggy hit it with a good fastball from about 10 feet away. this is best odne out doors. the remaining PBJ will be inverted from its original state. white and rye bread layers help as well. messy but impressive. SW |
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Extraction is fun:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid-liquid_extraction[/URL] http://orgchem.colorado.edu/hndbksupport/ext/extprocedure.html [URL=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=945061828857075635&hl=en]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=945061828857075635&hl=en You could do it using oil and colored water. Put the two in the same container, then separate them. The only problem is you'd either need to get the glassware (which is expensive) or figure out a way of doing it without the proper equipment. You could probably do it with a water bottle: 
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When i was a junior in HS, we had a mini science fair. My teacher who started it pulled me aside the day they anounced it and said "Dan, listen. I know your big into guns and blowing stuff up and thats fine, but, whatever project you think you might want to enter you have to run by me first and Officer Milton wants to know about it too. And if its something dangerous he has to be there when you present it." God i was a hellion. Never in trouble though, its just thats the kind of thing i tried to relate into the science stuff.
Personally, the kid who makes the potato gun usually whens. Especially if that kid has a poster board with velocity, energy at muzzle and target, and my own personal touch cuz my chemistry teacher is the absolute coolest guy i ever met, a diagram showing the make up and change of the propellant as its fired. 1st place right here as well. Fuck oBama |
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Scale model of the solar system - the planet diameters are in the same scale as the separation distances from the sun. For extra credit show the tilts of the planets' rotational axes and tilt of their orbits relative to the plane of the ecliptic. Research includes finding out what these words mean. Teaches measurements and scaled dimensions as well as planetary and solar science.
Parental involvement - brainstorm with the kids about how you will ever actually do this inside the Science Fair room. |
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How about one called "A Closer Look At Our Daily World."
The concept is to swab things people touch everyday. Door knobs, stair hand rails, handles on water coolers, elevator buttons, etc. Then grow cultures that show how much bacteria & crap we expose ourselves to every day. That would be a real eye opener.' I was going to have my daughter do this, but she didn't have to do a science fair this year. I thought about seeing if the lab students at the local technical college could help with growing the cultures and identifying what developed. |
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Get a gas "Laser" kit that lets you actually build teh diode, power supply and capacitors.
Setup a mirror matrix on a panel and then have a suspension material "Flour" to show how it interacts with particles. Kids love it and you can explain how the diode works as well. Throw in a prism for added bonus with a light refraction diagram. |
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Unless a project adds to the body of knowledge, it is just a demonstration. 99% of science fair projects are a waste of time and resources.
Remember the steps of the Scientific Process. Problem Research Hypothesis Experiment Analyze Data Determine Result I'm a MS science teacher. Have your kids do something real and not just a copy the work of someone else. |
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Hate to burst your balloon, but many kids (and some adults) actually HAVE FUN doing it.
Unless a project adds to the body of knowledge, it is just a demonstration. 99% of science fair projects are a waste of time and resources. Remember the steps of the Scientific Process. Problem Research Hypothesis Experiment Analyze Data Determine Result I'm a MS science teacher. Have your kids do something real and not just a copy the work of someone else. (Jeez, I can't believe it's me sayin' this.  )
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There was a kid at the local school that did a science fair project on how heat and cold affected a bullet resistant vest. I think his dad was LEO or something, anyway he had an old vest or 2 or 3 and shot them under various conditions: frozen, hot, normal, and compared them.
The range I'm a member at said it was ok and they let him set it up and run his tests |
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Unless a project adds to the body of knowledge, it is just a demonstration. 99% of science fair projects are a waste of time and resources. Remember the steps of the Scientific Process. Problem Research Hypothesis Experiment Analyze Data Determine Result I'm a MS science teacher. Have your kids do something real and not just a copy the work of someone else. So, what suggestions do you have for science projects for 5-10 year olds that have never been done before (or have been done only once or twice, allowing for a verification trial)? |
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Unless a project adds to the body of knowledge, it is just a demonstration. 99% of science fair projects are a waste of time and resources. Remember the steps of the Scientific Process. Problem Research Hypothesis Experiment Analyze Data Determine Result I'm a MS science teacher. Have your kids do something real and not just a copy the work of someone else. So, what suggestions do you have for science projects for 5-10 year olds that have never been done before (or have been done only once or twice, allowing for a verification trial)? I think anything less than an experimentally-verified unified field theory is unacceptable for a science fair entry from anyone over 2 years old, and even then, they're being lazy. |