Science fair projects

Ah tis the time for science fair projects and I am all out of ideas. I have

Chookie...

What is a science fair, exactly? I've seen them on the movies, usually where
the nerd's project is stomped on by a bully, but how are they run? Is it
compulsory? What age are we looking at?

looked on the net, with not-so-great results. Does anyone have any good/easy
ideas for a 3rd and 5th grader to do their projects on? Thanks so much.

cara...

An easy one for the 3rd grader is to test whether or not consumers are
getting what they are promised when purchasing a product. For example,
take different liquid products such as bottled water, soda, dishwashing
liquid, etc that have a volume listed on the outside in milliliters, get
a graduated cylinder from a science supply store and see if there are
indeed x mls in a Coke can, etc. Its a simple exercise in measuring,
you could do weights too if you got a kitchen scale, etc. Then graph
the expected results vs the actual.

Here are a few other ideas:
*Effects of salinity on plant growth (add varying % of salt-water
combinations to the same seed and document differences in growth)

*Cryopreservation and plant tissues (how does freezing affect
germination of different seedlings? Lima bean, lettuce, onion; freeze
for different lengths of time, then ‘plant’ in water saturated cotton in
Petri dishes in a warm, well lit conducive environment for growth)

*Mealworm sense of smell – buy mealworms at a local pet store, place
them in a marked center (piece of paper, etc), and place different items
like apples, rocks, etc in different spots on the paper - mark/document
where they go to see if sense of smell affects their directionality.

dh...

How about "fortified concrete" - or fortified chokolate cake: Bake a
regular chokolate spunge cake in a breadtin (sorta brick size), and one
identical to it, only adding spaghetties or long macaronies
(fortification). Se how hard/easy it is to break either one. The
spaghetti should have the exact same effect as adding iron to concrete.

Sue...

Hmm, that's interesting too. Thanks so much for the idea.

Sincerely,
Trisse

LAdezio...

OS's favorite science fair project (when he was in 4th grade) was
'observing the effect of heating and cooling on crystalization'.....

He made rock candy. :)

Did all the work at home in the kitchen and then did step by step
instructions on a display board. Had setups on the table showing the
string in water with sugar, then a small pan on an electric coil, and
then a string with the crystals formed on it.

He wanted to make a lot of rock candy so he could give out samples, but
it took much longer to get the sugar to crystalize on strings than he
thought it would, so I did have to make a run to a local candy shop
that sold clear rock candy. :)

It's broken down into elementary, jr. high and high school level
projects. Might give you more ideas.

Renee...

Can they bake? They could see what happens if you bake cookies without
different ingredients (baking soda, eggs, etc.) They wouldn't need to
make a whole batch for each test - just make a third of a batch for
each one. They could guess what is going to happen (the hypothesis),
and then they can have good cookies to "bribe" the judges. Just kidding
on the bribe part.

Sue...

Good idea. My 10-year-old loves to cook so that will be right up her alley.
Thank you. I was trying to come up with something about cooking since she
does like to cook. The only thing I could come up with is how does yeast
work, lol.