Any ideas for a really good, creative H.S. science experiment?
 

My son has a really tough HS science teacher. Needs to do a HS Science Fair type experiment that is scientifically sound, but interesting and creative.

Anyone have any good ones?

How about a $25 Pelican gift card to whoever comes up with something we use!

google five second rule. you let food hit the floor and then see if it grows germs. My son did that a few years ago using various foods and length of time on floor. Took second place in his division at county science fair.

What science? Chemistry, Bio, Physics?

Take a one pound bag of granular pool chlorine shock and pour a Coke into it. You'll kill everyone in the room.

I'll PM you my address for the gift card.

analyze thc content of hemp and demonstrate that smoldering hemp doesn't get everyone high in the room :P


ooo actually there was a recent article
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/08/27/teenage-marijuana-use-may-hurt-future-iq/

take sample set of mice. divide into control and experiment groups. subject each group to various amounts of pot. test intelligence with maze memorization.


if pot is an issue, do alcohol instead. teach those teenagers that binge drinking is bad for IQ

Was just talking to a friend about childhood science experiments the other day. She did one to answer the question of what factors influence the ripening of a banana. Where do bananas ripen faster? If left on the counter in the kitchen vs. in a brown paper bag vs. in the 'fridge vs. wrapped in cellophane vs. in a cool and dark pantry, etc.

My son (admittedly in 1st grade) did one on Hotwheels, inspired by the question of what makes one Hotwheels car faster than another? So we kept it simple and measured distance traveled instead of actually timing cars. He taped coins onto cars and noted that the heavier the car, the farther it traveled.

So what is the answer to the banana question?

I've got one: loop into the instructor's car throttle position sensor and ICV valve and see if you can play the Star Spangle Banner out of his tailpipe through a whoopee cushion.

I'll ask her when I see her tomorrow.

edit: Banana kept in a brown paper bag on the kitchen counter aged the best. The banana left in the 'fridge avoided brown spots the longest, but then would suddenly brown way quicker than normal once brought back to room temp.

Get him to present the future of Geo-spacial Information, just like my company is doing.

Hawkeye Americas is my company, affiliated with these folks: Home - HAWKEYE UAV

Ride the wave.

It can be in any field.

build a pulsejet. have your son do research and maybe math for tuning harmonics of the valve body.


or isopropyl alcohol and water jug. put it on a bathroom scale and measure the applied thrust. vary nozzles designs and fuel mixtures
isopropyl rocket engine - YouTube

everyone likes rockets right?
Rubbing Alcohol Rocket Mark 2 - YouTube

I've done two with my daughter over the years.

- Carbon fiber vs Fiberglass which is lighter and stronger?

- Helium vs Air vs Argon filled volleyballs. Which bounce higher?

Build a chronograph, and calculate the velocity & trajectory of a bullet - I recommend 22 short or CCI Quiet since they'll be slow enough to actually measure drop over short distances. Need a *straight* 3/16" dowel, some level bubbles, some hot glue, target stand, large cardboard backing (tall and wide), gun, ammo, place to shoot, calculator, micrometer, long measuring tape, lab notebook, etc.

Make a bore level by hot gluing one of the bubble levels to the one end of the dowel. Clamp gun in padded vise, put your bore level down the bore and get it level (duh). Put the target so the cardboard backing is as close to exactly 5 meters from the face of the muzzle. (metric makes the math easier). Use your laser, a piece of string (checking with one of the other level bubbles), etc. mark the spot the bullet would hit if it went in a perfect straight line. You can be off a little left to right if needed. A few inches above your mark, draw a level line across the target backing. Call the range hot, fire one shot, call the range cold, and go make another level line across the backing a few inches below the hole. Shift the target backing a few inches in either direction, re-check all alignment, go range hot, fire another shot. Repeat this until you have a good selection of holes to measure (statistical sample). You should now have a lot of parallel to gravity lines, with a mark near the top one and a hole near the bottom one.

Next move the target to 10 meters (remember, we're trying to figure out how fast it slows down), and repeat. Then 15 meters, and then 20 and 25.

You now have the amount of movement the bullet made (down), at several known distances. You know how fast it moved in a downward direction (9.8m/s^2). Which tells you the rate of travel over those distances. The rest - muzzle velocity (and then mean & standard deviation to make pretty graphs with), sectional density and ballistic coefficient should be published, and all of that and some math will allow you to determine the trajectory


I did this when I skipped 17 days of physics class in high school... told him I was either fishing or skeet shooting depending on the day of the week... since we covered gravity during that time in the class, I had to show him what I knew about gravity. Got an A for the term :)

;)

Hmm, I was going to suggest a volcano where you mix vinegar and baking soda inside to simulate an 'eruption'. Wrong crowd.

this might not be hi tech enough for high school but i help my daughter build a windtunnel and drilled a small hole in the middle of it, placed a digital balance under it. found several different airfoil profiles, built mini airfoils out of balsa wood and tedlar coated the foil and tested each one at varying wind speeds to determine which foil provides the best lift what what speed. it was easy to build, home depot sells polycarb sheet.

4x4x4 LED Cube?

LED Cube 4x4x4

I built the only working volcano in my class once, lava and everything. Red colored plaster of paris hardened in he bottom of a can (volcano mouth) then 1 cup sugar 1cup salt peeter sp? Mix, light a wooden match and stick it right in the sugar, smoke lame and red lava.

Another fun one is coffee mate, don't know what science it is but put some in your had a light a match own low and let the coffee mate stream from your hand and stand back :D

Potatos running a light bulb

Magnets are always fun

My son's sixth grade science fair experiment was to compare the effect of winglets on small "aircraft". He build a small windtunnel and force gauge, made various paper airplanes with/without winglets, and then measured drag.

I got honorable mentions twice in science fairs. One project was building a simple periscope and explaining how it worked. Another was explaining how different colors conduct heat. I put a simple light bulb and socket in the middle of a square board with four cans of water, each painted red, black, white or green and then with a small themometer in each one. When walking around and checking out the winners, it seemed the judges were more interested in how well you explained and demonstrated some law of science rather than how sophisticated the build was.

Use a Neon style light to demonstrate how JPL/NASA create lightweight propulsion systems for space craft by charging xenon gas and directing their energy for thrust.

Or if you can use project to show how telescopes work build a dobsonian telescope and document the process including the glass grinding and then demonstrate the results with pictures of what it you can see through it.

Levitate a frog.

Make and demonstrate Thermite

Build a tesla coil
...or a Van de Graaff Generator.

A lot depends on what you have access to or can gain access to. Thermite is always exciting but finding some of the components can be tough unless you are willing to purchase from a chem supply company.
Nitrogen tri iodide will produce a good bang but you will have to prep it on site and it cannot be disturbed while it dries...and especially when it is dry. If you son can be given access to a fume hood in a lab that will not be used for a few hours, that is a possibility.

Check out Flinn Scientifics website. There should be some good chemistry demos on there that may work. They used to include theory with their demos...not sure if they still do but it is worth a look.

We buy all our science equipment from this website. They have some ideas for projects.

Science Projects for Kids | Chemistry, Life Science, Physics

How about a subtle automotive one: Determining Friction Co-efficiency of Common Household Lubricants.

-Have a motor or two(hi/lo) driving a used crank through gears(pinion/square cut).
-Crank is positioned at the top of large flat plate on an angle.
-Attached to the crank offset bearings are cables attached to solid objects, which are dragged up and then slide down.
In the middle of these cables is some kind of pull-scale(such as for fishing).
-The path of each solid object is lubricated by a different product.

All factors are interchangeable and create mass data for bulk interpolation: Position, plate angle, temp, speed, mass of object, contact area, etc.

My son won first prize for an experiment describing plate tectonics. You take a cement block attach an eyebolt to it. Take a long bungee and thread it into a ratchet tie down crank which is bolted to the boards(6' long).
The block is placed on a board with gradations to see how far it moves. There is a scale to measure the stored energy before the force to move the block is overcome by the friction.
Very easy to make, simple design and demonstrates the built up energy very well.

G50-
Your kid has a tough HS teacher? Consider yourself fortunate to have such a teacher today!

Anyhow for a science fair project, here's what I did way back in 8th grade and with bragging rights, advanced to the state level competition at the university and won my class. Coming out of my only year at a small parochial school up against big public schools wasn't too bad either.

Have your kid build an electric motor out of household stuff (do not buy a kit - not impressive). Have them explain 'how does an electric motor work?' Give examples where used, types of and the future. So onto making one: I made a DC motor out of a wood base, wood dowel - metal rod (for the armature), metal rod bent for the fields, wire, tin snipped from pop can for the brushes and two ordinary bookshelf -L- type brackets, misc. nails. The working motor was approximately 20 in. long by 12 in. high. Not difficult, interesting and lots of show!

When in high school, I made a very simple working carburetor and showed atomization. I explained the purpose and how they work but nobody seemed to care or understand... laugh.

Whatever you decide, its great that your involved with your kid and looking for suggestions. Enjoy

First figure out if it's a "build and characterize cool stuff" or a "rigorously follow the scientific method" contest. There's a difference between the two.

If it's a scientific-method-focused one you'll get a leg up by simply following directions. Our county's science fair is like that. We (my professional organization) judge it every year - serious deductions for not following the scientific method AND for having obvious parental involvement.

Oh - don't do plants or other bio stuff. Everyone does that...

Map the RF field of a Tesla Coil.

Yes, that's spot on.

It's a "rigorously follow the scientific method" type thing. So, need a hypothesis, test procedure, control, etc.

Teacher has already warned about plant or other bio stuff! Too common.

I'm pretty surprised at the level of work that is expected of them at his school, and the volume of work, too.

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Now that's funny :D

What's he into? Earth Science, Physics, Reproduction, etc..?

He likes pretty much all aspects of science.

Something re physics would probably be cool. Something with physics, auto related? He likes cars!

He's also a golfer, that's his real passion, so we were brainstorming some ideas for a golf physics experiment. It's tough because repeatability of a golf swing is difficult, as is most measurements/data recording.

Golf ball dimples... lots of science there!

You could set up some sort of air gun to launch golf balls with very little variation between shots.

build wind tunnel. show difference in laminar airflow between smooth ball and dimpled ball.

Reproduce the experiment in which an electron simultaneously exists in two places at once!

(seriously - it's been done).

Or, through an elaborate flow-chart of energy, show that the Prius, Volt, Insight, etc. is less efficient than taking a steam train to work in which you heat the seats with a woodstove.

As for golf. How about what makes the 'ping' sound in a good hit as opposed to the 'thump' of a bad one.

Take care!