is this a good science fair project?

Question

•Who can do splits the farthest down?
•Doesn’t matter what age or gender.
•I will measure the length of the legs and measure how long the split is (like a ratio).
•The independent variable will be the sport that they play (like basketball, karate, dancing, gymnastics, baseball, football).

Answer 1

i like it, its origonal

Answer 2

Original, but of little value.

It might be of value to know how much spit each athlete can generate, but then you would also have to test normal humans as control subjects (something that you would need for your current experiment).

A better idea might be to measure lung capacity and you can use a balloon and long distance spiting to help measure that. We know that swimmers will have a better lung capacity, but what is the difference between those who play football and basketball, or baseball. The first two require long exerting activities, while the third requires short bursts of activity. Also how does lung capacity vary with the sport and the size of the player?

Quaterbacks have been taught ballet so they can be more graceful and to improve their reactions. Having more oxygen in the blood stream and the lungs will give a person more power to perform work or play. So what sport might improve a runner’s lung capacity so they can train indoors with that sport? The stop and go movement of basketball seems great for a sprinter, but what about a long distance runner?

It sounds like you are trying to create an experiment that uses a disgusting body fluid so you can poke a joke at the science fair, and yes you can do that and may even get away with it, but you won’t win. You won’t advance to the next level and your joke will soon be over. If you can get some real science out of it then you will force the teachers to think about it and that might just make your joke even better. Besides how funny would it be if you actually won? Part of a good science fair project is trying to be original and that is very hard to do, because so much has been done. Few people make a habit of studying spit or lugies, so you do have virgin territory here so why not make the project of actual scientific value? Then your teacher can’t refuse to let you enter it because the whole idea is stupid and then no one gets to see it and you put in all that work for nothing.

Answer 3

It's basically a simple good idea.

I'd recommend that you also really need to look at (or at least think about) things like 'no sport', and probably other things like dancing, etc, if you are not wanting to look at age, gender, etc, as it is already fairly well accepted that the young and females are usually more flexible.

If you just do the simple idea you have, your results are easily 'criticized' for ignoring these variables. Not that that is necessarily a claim that your research is poor, but you should be aware that you may get 'criticism' in this area.

Re your measurement method, check that you have some easily simple and repeatable method, like 2 pieces of board that will sit at right angles to the ground so that their bare feet touch (removes any shoe height variable), (also if they point their toes, it will interfere with the measurement, and introduce a source of uncontrolled variability - when standing up, the foot is at approx right angles to the ground!) and preferably these are in contact with a straight line, such as a length of timber, etc - as this method will give a good standard of reliability and repeatability to the measurement.

I'd recommend putting some thought as to WHERE you do the 'leg length' measurement to while your subjects are standing up - otherwise you have a 'hidden variable' of the distance BETWEEN the hip joints.... :-) as well as the 'argument' over just where the 'leg length' ends and how accurate the measurements are between subjects.

Real World Science, keeps on re-evaluating what is happening. You see, the only 'Science' that is 'simple' is 'Creation Science' !!! :-)

Answer 4

Sounds like a great bio-mechanics question!
But don't forget to record gender, age, size and weight, too. Then you can do a multi-dimensional analysis and compare which variable shows the strongest correlation.

And make sure nobody gets hurt.

Answer 5

I'll agree. That is a good project.