Does anybody have any ideas about a unique, interesting, blow-your-socks-off (yet easy) science fair project?

Question

It's for an 8th grade science fair, and I've never done a science fair project before and I desperatley need help!!!!

Answer 1

It's not easy, but my son did "can a hamster wheel power a light bulb?" last year. The hard part was getting the hamster to cooperate. The electric generator we built was from instructions here:

http://amasci.com/amateur/coilgen.html

One tip: don't use cardboard, use wood. We used 1/4 inch plywood to make the box, very similar to how greyfox (below) describes. However, if you don't want to do anything that requires a lot of patience, don't pick one with animals! They can be obstinate little suckers. Something with electricity, though, is definitely good.

I remember somebody built a working volcano with erupting lava when I was a kid. Another one I liked was whether a cork-filled baseball bat really hit the ball farther. Another idea that would be cool and not too hard would be to build a trebuchet (medieval catapult, which you can build fairly easily - there are kits and plans online) and see how the weight of the ball and counterweigh affected how far it would fly, and how accurate it is. High accuracy is what made the trebuchet a killer weapon in the middle ages. That would be a cool project.

Answer 2

get a super-strong bar magnet, and glue sticks on the sides, so you can spin it.

put it into a box so that the sticks are out in the open, and you can make the magnet TWIRL in that box.

Buy a spool of THIN THIN THIN insulated copper wire...this is usually almost as thin as hair and covered in a thin layer of paint. The longer the wire is, the better. make it at least 100 feet for a good show!

Wrap the wire around the box, but not the same way the magnet spins...warap it so it goes arounds where the stick twirls.

You have built an AC generator. Attatch an AC light bulb to it (bring it to radio shack and ask for help).

Bam. a few small purchases and a half hour of twirling wire around a box.

Add a bunch of facts about AC generation, and how it works, and you'll do well

Answer 3

Do the speed of gravity. I'm sure you have heard people ask, "If I drop a penny versus a basketball which will hit the ground first?" Assuming their is no air friction, gravity falls at a constant speed of 9.2 sec/meter square regardless of mass. Do this experiment 10 times, get the average, and you will see it will be almost the same seconds for each item to hit the floor. You can also show this with a pendulum swing. I was a science camp instructor, it was easy and fun for kids because they always thought the item with the most mass would hit the floor first.

Answer 4

My friend won the science fair in 8th grade for taking baby chick eggs that were going to hatch and putting them in blue dye. She gave them back to the mom to incubate. Once the blue eggs hatched, the chicks' were born with blue feathers! The dye seeps through the shell and makes the chicks turn blue permanently, at least until they get their adult feathers. She took a picture of them to prove it. To do this though, you would need to live in an area in which you have access to a farmer's farm and would need chicken eggs that are already FERTILIZED and will grow into chickens. Your thesis should talk about the permeability of egg shells.

This project blew everyone's socks off! its wierd looking at blue chicks, yet the project itself is so easy- if you can color easter eggs, you can turn chickens blue.

Good luck!

Answer 5

ok, um i know a cool chemical reactions project that that my sister's friend did. but warning: its kind of messy. take a 2-liter coke bottle (diet, prefferably) and drop 2 mentos in. big explosion! you can also fill a volcano model with cherry colored soda and drop a mento in to watch it explode. but its a do it once, and never again with that coke bottle again thing.

Answer 6

http://www.scienceproject.com/
Hundreds of step by step ideas here from the very basic to the elaborate. Check it out and decide what you like.

Answer 7

Just do the volcano.......Its all been done before. Unless you can master Nuclear physics whats the use....