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Science fair experiments
Click
here to see our selection of Science fair experiments.
 Firstly,
a science
fair experiment should be something that the student
is curious about—an experiment that he or she wants to do
because they want to know the answer to a certain scientific question.
So the first thing you will want to do when choosing a science fair
experiment is ask the student what he or she wants to do. No ideas?
Here are a few.
When I was in the fourth grade I wanted to know how airplanes can
fly. My father said that that was too complicated a topic for our
annual science fair, so we brainstormed some other ideas. The volcano
one we already did in class? No, not that. Maybe I could do something
with magnets—but we had already done a lot of stuff in class
with magnets and they were starting to bore me. I couldn’t
come up with anything.
A few days later when my dad and I went for a hike I noticed a
cliff we always passed by when would hike this trail. I stopped
to look at it. Pieces of dirt and rock had rolled off of it. They
always rolled off. Lots of times, people had to move the rocks out
of the way of the trail so that people could still walk on it.
“Why does it do that?” I asked my Daddy.
“Because of erosion,” he said, “would you like
to do your science fair experiment on erosion?”
And I said yes, I did.
The premise was simple, to watch a piece of land or earth erode
and explain why. But erosion takes place over many years and so
we had to take our little piece of land and simulate activity that
would cause erosion, primarily rain and wind. The factors that cause
erosion are weather, wind, and gravity.
This example is not the only thing that a child could find interesting
while on a walk in the woods. Some children might be curious about
how the same plant would grow in different conditions
For this science fair experiment the child would have to have three
plants, all planted at the same time. One plant could be placed
in a room with plenty of light and very little noise—this
will be the “control” plant. Another plant could be
in a room with plenty of light and soft music constantly playing.
And the third plant can be set up in a room with plenty of light
and a lot of screaming or yelling in the background (music like
heavy metal where the musicians shout and scream a lot might be
the best way to do this). The experiment will prove which plant
grows best. And the hypothesis could be that the plant that was
in a space with soft music playing would grow better than the rest.
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