What is a great science project for a highschooler?

Question

Can you think of a really good science fair project for someone in the 9th grade?

Answer 1

I would recommend something involving the brain. Look up psychology/sociology experiments. It's relatively easy to interview people or do simple experiments on them to learn something about behavior, and you might actually discover something new. It won me a science fair.

Answer 2

Here is a project that should be fairly easy to accomplish, will impress your educators if you do a thorough job, and could even turn into a future for a 9th Grader:

Go through the newspaper every day for a week, and find all the "scientific claims" made by people in local or national government. Then use the internet to see whether the scientific community actually supports what they said.

I suspect one or two weeks of this would be enough to turn a fairly literate 9th grader into a budding investigative journalist! Science even at the 9th Grade is enough to understand how little most politicians understand of how the world physically works!

Good luck!

Or here's an even easier one to demonstrate how much better a 9th Grader's understanding of basic science is than most adults; See how many people you can get to sign a petition calling for tighter government controls on dihydrogen oxide emissions. This chemical is released into the air in the hundreds of millions of gallons every year by factories, power stations, homes and cars, and can kill if inhaled directly. It causes terrible corrosion to most metals, poses a threat to building structures, and yet is allowed by the FDA as an ingredient in baby food! It's easy to get adults to sign a petition like this! This chemical is also sometimes called "water"!

Answer 3

Well, i would definitely avoid any project of the form "What is the effect of (fill in the blank) on plant growth?" - that is so overdone, no one really cares to read the results. Growing bacteria for some reason usually goes over well. You'd almost need to give some kind of category you are interested in or have to have the project about in order to get a good answer for this one, and I'm a science teacher!

Answer 4

Try separating water in to its molecular components, Hydrogen and Oxygen. If you could pull this off you would be the most popular and most sought after grade 9 student in America. The reason is that Transportation in the future will be powered by Hydrogen and there are billions of dollars being spent in the USA right now to find an alternative to gasoline.

Answer 5

Do a research project on phobias. Interview about 20 to 50 people and ask them what their number one phobia is, then ask them if they have had it for as long as they can recall, or if they developed it, and if so, what event triggered them having a phobia. Or, if you waited too long, do a simple one, like do batteries last longer when stored in a cool place, room temperature, or in a warm place. Those are just some ideas.

Answer 6

Toothpick bridges. They're easy and fun to make. And the science part of it is physics. Easy physics, though. Test which type of bridge can hold the most weight. There's a bunch of sites on the web that you can find through yahoo that will teach you how.

Answer 7

Report on the immediate and long-term effects of releasing greased pigs in an elderly retirement home. Be sure to include good photo-documentation of every single piece of data.

Answer 8

Play classical music really loud someplace crowded like at a basketball game and watch the crowd evaporate.

Why is that? Why do people react in different ways to different
sounds?
What is sound anyay? WHAT IS MUSIC?

Answer 9

Discover Dark Matter,

Answer 10

Do an expirement that asks whether the color of the food affects the human appetite to eat it. Does color affect taste? Thats what I did and I got second place.