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Cool science fair projects

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These cool science fair projects will stimulate creativity as well as functioning to teach science to kids who may find it otherwise boring. Students who dread the science fair need cool science fair projects—it may even make them realize that learning science can be fun! Here are some cool science fair projects to try:

· Salt Volcano: (make your own lava light)

Lava lights are basically tall thin glass jars filled with liquid and a special kind of colored wax. These lights a base with a light bulb. Then when the light is turned on, the liquid heats up, and the wax begins to melt so blobs of wax rise to the top. This is one of our cool science fair projects and it will help you make something similar to a lava lamp.

You will need: A glass jar or clear drinking glass
Vegetable oil
Salt
Water
Food coloring (optional)

• How to do this cool science fair project:

1) Pour about 3 inches of water into the jar.
2) Pour about 1/3 cup of vegetable oil into the jar. The oil will be on top.
3) If you want to you can add one drop of food coloring to the water and oil in the jar.
4) Shake salt on top of the oil while you count slowly to 5.

For younger ages, this is one of many cool science fair projects—yep it is messy, but it is fun!

What happens? In this cool science fair project you will see that the oil floats on water. The reason is for this is that water is denser than oil. Cool science fair projects will teach you things like this: as you can see, things that are less dense than water will float in water and things that are more dense than water will sink.

Oil and water are what chemists call immiscible liquids. That's a fancy word that means they will not mix.

In cool science fair projects like this one, your students will find that salt is heavier than water, so when you pour salt on the oil, it will sink to the bottom and carry a blob of oil down with it. Salt dissolves in water. When that happens, the salt releases the oil, which floats back up to the top of the water.

Other cool science fair projects include:

• Potato Batteries

Not only are potatoes are good to eat, but they are also the tastiest battery in nature. Let us use this particular one of our cool science fair projects ideas to find out about the science behind this powerfully delicious food.

Making a clock run just by a potato easier that you might think. This cool science fair project is simple to do.

You will need:

Two Potatoes
Two short pieces of heavy copper wire
Two common galvanized nails
Three alligator clips connected to each other with wire
One simple low-voltage LED clock that functions from a 1- to 2-volt button-type battery

What to do for this particular cool science fair project:

• Remove the actual battery from the battery compartment of the clock.
• Make sure to make a note of which way around the positive (+) and the negative (-) points of the battery went for this cool science fair project.
• Number the potatoes as one and two.
• Insert one of the nails into each potato.
• Insert one short piece of copper wire into each potato—but remember to put the wire in as far away from the nail as possible.
• Use one alligator clip to connect the copper wire in potato number one to the positive (+) part of the clocks battery compartment.
• Use one alligator clip to connect the nail in the second potato to the negative (-) part of the clocks battery compartment.
• Then use the third alligator clip to attach the nail in potato one to the copper wire in potato two

And the you can set the clock!

How this one of our cool science fair projects: The Potato Clock works:
A potato battery is electrochemical, it is recognized as an electrochemical cell. In an electrochemical cell chemical energy is changed into to electric energy because of a spontaneous electron transfer. In the case of the cool science fair project: The Potato Clock, the zinc in the nail reacts with the copper in the copper wire. The potato is like a sort of buffer that functions between the zinc ions and the copper ions. The zinc and copper ions would still react if they touched within the potato but they would only be able to generate heat. So for this cool science fair project, you want to keep the nail and the copper wire as far from each other as you can. Since the potato keeps them apart, the electron transfer will take place over the copper wires of the circuit, which then transfers that energy into the clock.

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