Science project help/suggestions

In My Humble Opinion
1

Our school system has decided that it is more important to keep a number of partially employed vice prinicipals making $ 90,000 annually on the payroll than to fund the science fair this year. (imagine picture of school system with pockets turned inside out and sad look on it’s face :frowning: )
In any case as a pissed off geek dad :mad: I damn well intend to have some kind of science project for my 11 year old son this year that we can work on together. I wanted to include my 14 (soon to be 15 and a veteran of science fairs past) year old daughter as well but she gave me that uniquely female “Yeah right” look and a lecture about how she was much too busy for any of that anymore.

So it’s just the boys this time and I’m looking for suggestions. I’m not bound by the shackles of science fair PCness anymore so anything’s fair game at this point. A potato gun comes to mind but given how powerful some of these are I’m concerned about safety and although I have plenty of tools I don’t have a machine shop if that is required. I want something neat we can work on together that will hopefully impart some sort of “How Things Work” lesson in the process.

Any suggestions appreciated.

2

Nova had these great shows that focused on old or ancient feats of engineering. Teams of modern buidlers and engineers tried to figure out how they did it. Try building a trebuchet, or an arched brige made of only straight pieces, or an obielisk.
BTW, speaking as a teacher in a public school, science fairs suck because of the over involvement of many parents AND $90,000 a year is not nearly enough money to balance the unbelievable crap the average school adminstrator has to put up with.
Nuff said.

3

My son had a science assignment that might be just the ticket for you. He had to devise a Rube Goldberg device that would take a container of marbles, toothpicks, and paperclips all mixed together and separate them into separate containers. Just to make it more difficult, The process had to take exactly 60 seconds from start to finish. Points were deducted for every second over or under one minute.

My son and his father went crazy trying to figure out how to do this. I think they wound up using a walkman tape with 60 secs. on it to trigger the device.

Or you could do something that won’t make you want to kill each other.
This link will take you to a contest for Rube Goldberg machines if you’re missing that competetive spirit of the science fair http://www.anl.gov/OPA/rube/

4

I think you can’t win.
At the local highschool fair, we had two finalists.
One was making Buckyballs out of a blowtorch and magnet rig that he had to study a long time to do.
All the students were amazed that something that sophisticated was possible on a student’s budget and talent, but he convinced us that it was easier than it sounds.

He came in second!

The winner? A classic 5th-grade level moldy food in the fridge thing. All pictures of how the mold grew every day, and she didn’t even bother to study up on mold for the detail or footnotes.

All the real science jocks were stunned and turned off by the competition. Some said they would protest when the student council next met, but they forgot by then.

5

Thanks for the suggestions. BTW it not the pay per se but the fact that they have overstaffed these admin. positions while crying “poor mouth” in other areas and in some case have three VP’s for one medium sized elementary school and they will not cut these positions. Nonsense like this gets annoying. But as you said 'nuff said. On with the project.

6

Okay, are you after “winning” per se, or is it enough for you and Astro Jr. just to have a project that’s not totally lame? 'Cause it’s hard to tell what the judges will be looking for.

If the answer is (A), then I have no clue what to tell you. Judges get bored easily, and building a home nuclear reactor or a time travel machine has been “done” so many times… :smiley:

If the answer if (B), my advice would be to look around at what you’re good at. Handyman Fixup stuff? Then look for a project that involves power tools. Gardening? Go for the Green Project–grow something, experiment on bean seeds. Electronics? Rig up something with bells and whistles that explodes nicely when you push the button. Animals? Make a Hamster Habitat from the Planet Zarquon. Which UFO will Sniffy prefer to drive, the one with windows, or the one without?

7

Off to IMHO.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

8

oh, and–what’s the time frame? When is the fair?

9

Re-read the OP, Ducky… There is no fair, and no judges. astro is just saying that he’s not going to let that stop him, and is going to give his kids educational opportunities, regardless of what the school board says. I salute you for that, astro: Parental involvement is the single biggest factor in determining a student’s success.

Now, as for ideas, what areas of science are your kids interested in? A good biology project, for instance, will be completely different from a good astronomy project. Do you want something more experiment-oriented, or library research? And just how far are you going on safety (Cleveland won’t allow any liquids other than water, no living organisms, and nothing that plugs into an outlet. I presume you’re not going that far?)?

10

Make a Tesla coil. I did that for a science fair once and it was a big hit. Of course, that might be a little too advanced for an 11 year old…

11

He might be a bit young for this, but maybe you two could build a couple of simple Battlebot type machines and have it out in the back yard.

Your son would learn a bit about electronics, fabrication, maybe some physics, use of tools, etc.

Plus he would satisfy the eleven year old male urge to destroy stuff as he kicked your butt. :slight_smile:

12

a) I think this is a really admirable dad thing to do.
b) I think you should look for some area of science that your son has some interest in. Or some area that you think he could become very interested in. What are his interests?

13

Oh, okay. I read the OP as meaning that they were still going to have a science fair of some kind, but with no funding, i.e. with all volunteers.

Well, the thing that Bonzo (now age 14) has always enjoyed the most is simply taking electronics apart, right down to the itty-bitty screws. He doesn’t want to see how they work–he just likes dismantling them. If you were his dad, and you wanted to make him truly happy and do a Dad Thing together, you would go find him the biggest, most righteous piece of serious (presumably broken) electronics you could find, hand him the tiny screwdriver kit, and get out of his way.

VCRs are the most fun. Printers are boring. Old Nintendos from the 1980s are so-so.

So far he hasn’t been allowed to do a TV set or monitor, because of the electric shock hazard. So that might be a thought.

14

I think doing a science project is a great idea.

Where do you live?

If you’re someplace that has creeks, yards, or any kind of wildlife (i.e., not in the middle of NY, Chicago, Toronto, or London) and that gets cold in fall and/or winter, you could do a mini-survey (or even just a collection) of organisms that manage to live through the winter.

Have you and your son looked at anything under a microscope together? I can tell you that there are some amazing little critters out there, just waiting to be discovered by the two of you. Do you know what a collembolan is? How about a pseudoscorpion? Did you know that beetles, like butterflies, have larval, pupal, and mature stages? Have you ever seen a dragonfly or mayfly larva? They’re really neat-looking, and they live for years as larvae before ever becoming adults!

If you’d like, I can give you some tips on good places to look for interesting insects, insect relatives, and microorganisms. (Have you ever heard of or seen a water bear? Those guys are some of the coolest creatures on Earth! They live through all kinds of environments that would kill us dead, and they can live for–no joke–hundreds of years.) I can also tell you of some neat-o collection techniques that are cheap and can yield wonderful results that will amaze you if you’ve never used those methods before.

Incidentally, you could follow up collecting and observing the little guys with some library research on how the creatures manage to make it through freezing cold winters. Many of them have ways of pulling through, despite the fact that they’re poikilothermic (cold-blooded.)

If you’re somewhere where it stays warm through the holiday season, you can still do an exploratory insect and other critter collection. Microscopes work in hot weather, too. And there are some wonderful ways that insects and microorganisms have developed to deal with extreme heat, or high salt content in water (a good thing to consider if you’re near the Great Salt Lake), or drought (important to critters in the desert), too. Wherever you are, plants, animals, fungi, and various microorganismic critters have evolved some sort of incredibly cool adaptation for those surroundings. If you’re somewhere warm, you could also do a survey of the plants that live near you, and learn about some of the neat ways they work.

Feel free to e-mail me if you’d like specific recommendations on collection techniques, identification books, or other sources of info.

15

My Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] has had several interesting projects. In 6th grade, she did a study of inertia and momentum - she built a car with her erector set, weighted it down and ran it along a track. In 7th grade, she used different acids to make batteries. In 8th grade, she compared three different sailboat keel designs for righting moment - that one won her all kinds of awards. Last year, she didn’t do one, but this year she’s looking at corrosion and corrosion prevention.

The kid loves science - I’m so proud…

16

Here’s my favorite - can be adapted for just many different ages.
Compare different types of bird seed to see if different seeds attract different birds.
It is very simple, but satisfies all of the appropriate science fair experiment (as opposed to demo) criteria.
Form a hypothesis.
Have a control (mixed seed).
Multiple ways to measure - amount of seed eaten, number and species of birds observed during a specified period.
And it is relevant to your locality, and understandable to your audience.
My 1st kid won big with this in kindergarten, bbut I could imagine doing it up for a middle schooler.

17

My kid did well with this one last year. We went down to the river and got several bottles of water. Then he ran the water through homemade filters of different designs. (Sand, cotton balls, all kinds of junk) Then he used a water quality test kit and a microscope to see how well the filters worked, and compared it to our tap water.

18

Thanks for all the suggestions. They were terrific!

I’m thinking about a backyard catapult of some kind that has some decent power and the best way to build and test one without killing ourselves. I need to be able to break it down and put it in a sedan in order to transport it to a large field to test it.

Secondly what sort of lessons this could be used to teach?

Hmmmm…more surgical tubing = more power. What (non-caculus) equations could be used for power/weight/distance calculations with a simple catapult?

19

http://www.trebuchet.com

All you could ever want to know about trebuchets. Also has tons of links to other sites.

20

Conservation of energy is your friend. In a spring (surgical tubing can be approximated as a spring), the potential energy is 1/2 kx[sup]2[/sup], where k is the spring constant and x is the amount it’s stretched from its rest length. Kinetic energy is 1/2 mv[sup]2[/sup], and gravitational potential energy is mgh. That should be enough to get you started.