Comments on: Science Fair Ideas!

By: Charlie - Engineering Student & Science Fair Projects Entusiast

Charlie - Engineering Student & Science Fair Projects Entusiast — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 16:36:42 +0000

Hmmm... a thought provoking post. Although I thought science fair projects are supposed to explore questions that can be tested. Isn't this what separates science from what is not science? These examples take the cake for me: Why do people believe in Evolution? Why do cats hate dogs and dogs hate cats? What shape is outer space? I won't even elaborate...lol Great post though, I can see it has invoked the inner passion of some.

By: Rod

Rod — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:02:08 +0000

As the chairman of our local Scifair, I find several troubling elements here. Many of the suggested topics are completely unethical… no experimentation on vertebrates, no ingesting anything (ie. vegetables), no electrocution of anyone… we’d have problems with a 9 volt battery and a cockroach!
As to the questions involving god… find a better question!
Make a testable hypothesis! learn about independent methods of verification.
We see a lot of the same stuff year after year, but as judges we have to remember that when you are 11 or 12, a lot of cool stuff is new to you… the key is how well you investigated it how well your conclusions supported your hypothesis.
Even a cheesy topic such as does playing rock music to plants make them grow better can be done well by a 12 yr. old, and they learn a lot from the process… controls, blanks, identifying variables, sources of error, tabling results, making a decent presentation… all of these can make a winning project at that grade level, while not a colpetitor at the national level. If they do well with a trivial, project, they’ll come back next year with a better one, and the process is reinforced. If we as judges crap on their efforts we’ll never see them again and they’ll have a mad on for science that may last a lifetime.
In 25 + yrs of SF involvement, I’ve seen ’em all.

By: DuWayne

DuWayne — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:49:54 +0000

Well I also think it is important to recognize that most kids go with what they have been learning about – the more “creative” going for a book of projects in the library. And for the record (not to be critical – seriously) plant growth and tadpoles both are rather common. So are, these days, wind driven and even water driven turbine generators.

Some high school students I know even went in for a group competition. They built wind turbine generators with old motors (such as a treadmill motor and about that size) and designed a turbine – the competition obviously being to produce the most power. It is actually quite impressive the amount of power motors that small can produce. They had to explain exactly why they felt their design should be the winner. The person who won the actual school competition didn’t actually win the personal contest between them – he was able to explain his reasoning rather well, if he were a better fabricator, he would have probably won.

I think there tends to be a great deal of trendiness to science fair projects. But again, I honestly don’t think it really matters. The actual subject of the experiment or project is irrelevant to the goal (unless it happens to be “proving” some biblical point. The goal is for kids to come out of it understanding how science works.

The bottom line, is that it is really hard to come up with original ideas for science fair projects with the materials most kids have on hand and the level of knowledge they have…

By: Jared

Jared — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:58:34 +0000

DuWayne, I understand that only a few kids could come up with a decent novel hypothesis, but how about something not-already-repeated-ad nauseum? I mean, “plant growth rates and CO2” wouldn’t be bad. Most kids know plants require water, CO2, and sunlight. Another one off the top of my head would be population densities of (insert species name here) in (whatever region you live in). The ones I did in elementary school involved something about photoperiods and plant flowering or frog reproduction (total eggs laid per female).* It’s not difficult to come up with something new if they have a decent understanding of some aspect of science.

*one of these I did in junior high, the other in 6th grade, I do not know the order…

Still, does the lack of creativity in science fairs reflect a lack of childhood creativity, or a lack of scientific literacy?

By: DuWayne

DuWayne — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:43:41 +0000

Jared –

I often found myself wondering why “science fairs” so frequently involve expeiments where the answer is already known.

Mainly because we are usually talking about relatively young kids. I mean hell, I think I was maybe twelve at the oldest when I participated in one. The idea is to help kids understand the concepts involved in doing science. Have a question about a phenom, take a broad related theory and develop a specific hypothesis that is falsifiable, define and design an experiment (or study) and at the fair (as apposed to publishing in a journal) communicate your findings. I learned all that more than twenty years ago – I couldn’t for the life of me begin to remember what I actually did – except that it involved electricity.

I am not saying that that is how sci-fairs always work in practice, but the bottom line is that the actual experiment/subject is largely irrelevant (unless we are talking about the majority of the list in Greg’s post). And honestly, there are a very few kids who are going to be remotely capable of coming up with an even seemingly original topic. But of course that is also part of doing science – replicable results.

By: Cthulhu's minion

Cthulhu's minion — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:03:03 +0000

But what if you glued a piece of buttered toast to the back of the cat?

By: davem

davem — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:37:17 +0000

Some there would take 1 minute googling, and others that’d take a lifetime’s study. But I’d go for no.4, and I’d explain the virtues of a binary search to the director who set these questions up: “OK, so 5V didn’t kill my friend, director, so let’s see if 500,000V kills you. If it does, then the answer is somewhere betwetween 5 and 500,000″…

By: Jared

Jared — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:08:31 +0000

WMDKitty, you have to create two populations utilizing clones!

By: WMDKitty

WMDKitty — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:16:47 +0000

Greg @3 — I have no clue, compare the health of two groups of people, one on a diet including plenty of fresh fruits and veggies, and the other, like… with few fruits and vegetables. How you’d control for genetic variance, though, I have no clue. I am not a scientist.

By: rob

rob — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:20:58 +0000

the science fair is at har mar mall. so close. so tempting to go and have a good laugh.