can anyone help me in my science fair project?

One of the coolest demonstrations I’ve seen involved adding a teaspoon of cooking oil to a bag of iron filings. It becomes a muddy looking mess. Then you put a spoon in it. Place a magnet next to the bag and the filings become a solid.

You can’t remove the spoon because the iron filings line up very closely and densely due to the lubrication effect of the cooking oil.

Remove the magnet and you again have a bag of gooey iron filings.

There are many experiments that you can do with this. You can research different applications on the net. One that comes to mind is making very low friction bearings.

My daughter took 2nd place with this one: Do a survey of 20 people. Have some different food items set up like apples, kiwi, mints, etc. and do a blind taste test. Have each person taste each different food first with a nose plug and then without.

The purpose is to see just how much the sense of smell contributes to how foods taste. You’ll be amazed how many people don’t even seem to have a sense of taste without being able to smell the food.

One more: With a few simple items that you get at radio shack and the hardware store, you can build a home made DC motor. I ran across a sight that tells you how to build it and the theory behind how it works.

Good luck. If you decide to use one of these make sure you give me the 10 pts. Hehe. Have fun.

What kinds of things interest you? If you’re good with plants you could build a simple hydroponics system and see which fertilizers or lights work best.

If you’re a “people person” you could demonstrate how different kinds of advertising affect people. Most people you talk to would claim that advertising has little or no effect on them. If that’s true, why do companies spend billions of dollars a year on marketing?

If you have an interest in environmental issues you could showcase a self-sustained water system commonly used in “earth-ships”. Rainwater is funneled from the roof into cisterns, filtered, pressurized, used for showering or whatever, and then treated by means of a greywater system. Water can be used 4 times and never see a conventional sewer system. It’s a great project if you live in an arid region.

There are a ton of great projects out there. Post your interests and we can come up with something informative and fun!

Science Fair Projects

Selecting the Subject

•Hundreds of free science fair projects are categorized under the following topics.

http://www.freesciencefairproject.com/

http://school.discovery.com/sciencefaircentral/

http://www.scienceproject.com/

http://www.ipl.org/div/projectguide/

http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/

http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/projects/index.html

http://collaboratory.nunet.net/timber/scifair/2proj.htm

http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/projectguide/

http://www.niles-hs.k12.il.us/jacnau/IJAS/

http://www.plymouthschools.com/Science/scifair/scicover.htm

Tips for Success

http://school.discovery.com/sciencefaircentral/scifairstudio/handbook/scientificmethod.html

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentoring/project_tips.shtml

I made a fully functional plutonium enrichment reactor for my science project.

My friend successfully cloned her little sister using household items.

Give it a try.

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