A science project - Need help

[Inferno]

I'm proud to say that my ten year old sister and a friend of hers have been chosen by a committee of my old school to present a science project in some city. No idea where. Doesn't matter.
The problem is, they've got to come up with an idea. It basically has to be some kind of presentation that shows not only how the experiment works, but also how science works. (Basically doing a few experiments, working out which one worked best and then explaining the result.) Now normally you'd get the sort of standard experiments about how you can fuel a light-bulb with potatoes or something. Some experiments are actually quite cool, like if you cut off flowers and put them in different liquids, how long will they survive.

Obviously, I've already thought of some (light refraction, double slit experiment) but for now I can't think of anything even remotely cool. The coolest for now is light refraction where you can isolate different colours, using a prism to refract and then (infract???) light, showing that it goes slower in different media, etc.
However, I feel that won't cut it.

So, my plea for help: Can you think of any experiment in science (be it chemistry, physics or biology) that can be understood and explained by a ten year old and that can do what I explained above? If you can think of anything (I'm currently drawing a blank) please post here asap, I need an idea by the 20th and then I can probably work it out with her on our own until mid December.

Thanks

 

[Laurens]

Could you do something to trick the audience, such as asking if they think that distilled water conducts electricity. The observers would most likely say 'yes', then test it to see if they're right, and you'll find that it doesn't.

Then you could explain how science is about testing your ideas to see whether or not they are true, and how sometimes you can be surprised!

Then of course explain that tap water does conduct electricity because it contains ions, and demonstrate it with a test...

That's the first thing that came into my head...

 

[Inferno]

Could you do something to trick the audience, such as asking if they think that distilled water conducts electricity. The observers would most likely say 'yes', then test it to see if they're right, and you'll find that it doesn't.

Then you could explain how science is about testing your ideas to see whether or not they are true, and how sometimes you can be surprised!

Then of course explain that tap water does conduct electricity because it contains ions, and demonstrate it with a test...

That's the first thing that came into my head...

Sadly, no. It's "handing in a project beforehand" like you'd hand in a scientific paper. What the kids have to do is present it to a committee.

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

Maybe you can try the wooden-ruler-broken-under-newspaper trick. Placing a ruler on a table's edge with a sheet of newspaper over it - google it. Fun trick, you can really surprise the young audience - the magic of air pressure!

 

[Laurens]

Perhaps you could elaborate on how it's supposed to explain the principles of an experiment.

Testing out a hypothesis?
Analysing results?
Evaluating what could be done better?

One way that really got me to understand experiments is to do one that has some flaws in it, to look at the results and see how the flaws might have affected them, and evaluate how to do the experiment better next time, it was a really good way of understanding experiments, but I don't know if that is the kind of thing you're after.

EDIT, so you could present an experiment, that has some flaws in it, say, not bothering to measure out a quantity properly or something, explain what was wrong with it then repeat the experiment having corrected the mistake, and show that it produces better results...

 

[Laurens]

Perhaps you could do the old classic Paper Chromatography?

 

[Sparky]

The committee will probably be looking for a bit of critical thinking I would say so you should probably stay away from very well known experiments that have been done in the past.

As an example of what you should maybe look at doing I did reasonably well in a science fair at that age by doing an experiment on projectile motion. I made my own cannon by taping a plastic ball firing toy to a lamp so that I could alter the firing angle and then taped a protractor to the lamp and taped a bit of string with a weight at one end to the protractor so that I could measure the angle that I was firing the ball at. I fired the ball ~50 times at a number of different angles and plotted the average results on a graph. I was then able to deduce that 45 degrees was the best angle. Unfortunately I wasn't able to derive the optimum angle at that age to show why I was right so I just gave a bit of a hand-wavy answer based on some internet sites I read.

Another one that was really cool and got one of my mates on tv was that she tested different materials for their ability to act as noise suppressants and she found that popcorn worked really well. She then made a device to stick on a hair dryer with the popcorn in it to show the improvement.

Not sure if these are the sorts of things that you wanted but if I was a science fair judge I would give big kudos to kids trying something original or that involved them coming up with their own unique experiment to test a hypothesis.

 

[Inferno]

Yup, Sparky's right on track. I wasn't explaining myself properly yesterday evening but yes, that is the sort of stuff I'm looking for.
Not cheap magic tricks, but original ideas like what you said about the hair dryer. (Love the idea!)

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

First, infraction is not a word.
Second there are a couple of cool experiments, like:
1. crushing a soda-can with some water, ice and a hotplate
(basicaly consists of puting some water in the can, heat in the hotplate until it vaporizes and very quicly deep the can in the icy water with the small opening face down, because of the rapid cooling itwould create a vacum inside and because the opening of the can is to small to let water in very fast the can will be crushed by the outside pressure)

2. The magic peon
Basicaly uses the girscopic effect, you attach a rope in the center axis of the wheel (but not in the center of the wheel) and let it dangle, the first time you do this with the wheel not spining the wheel just drops like expected, but the second time if you make the wheel spin very fast when you let go the wheel it will just go arround the rope instead of falling down.

I can try to remember later of some easy to set up yet cool experiments.

 

[Inferno]

First, infraction is not a word.

I know, I was messing.

Thanks for the experiments though, some good ideas all around.

 

[Laurens]

A good fun one might be to get a load of plastic rod thingys (I have no idea of the technical term), get kids to rub them in their hair to generate a static charge and see how they can 'bend' a stream of water.

I'd imagine kids would enjoy it, pretending to have magic wands that can bend a stream of water without touching it...

 

[Inferno]

Thanks all. After talking to the father of the other girl (He's a science professor at their school) we both agreed that they should do light refraction.
If anyone's interested, I'll post what they've written by mid December or so.

 

[Nemesiah]

I'm proud to say that my ten year old sister and a friend of hers have been chosen by a committee of my old school to present a science project in some city. No idea where. Doesn't matter.
The problem is, they've got to come up with an idea. It basically has to be some kind of presentation that shows not only how the experiment works, but also how science works. (Basically doing a few experiments, working out which one worked best and then explaining the result.) Now normally you'd get the sort of standard experiments about how you can fuel a light-bulb with potatoes or something. Some experiments are actually quite cool, like if you cut off flowers and put them in different liquids, how long will they survive.

Obviously, I've already thought of some (light refraction, double slit experiment) but for now I can't think of anything even remotely cool. The coolest for now is light refraction where you can isolate different colours, using a prism to refract and then (infract???) light, showing that it goes slower in different media, etc.
However, I feel that won't cut it.

So, my plea for help: Can you think of any experiment in science (be it chemistry, physics or biology) that can be understood and explained by a ten year old and that can do what I explained above? If you can think of anything (I'm currently drawing a blank) please post here asap, I need an idea by the 20th and then I can probably work it out with her on our own until mid December.

Thanks

Do the heat dispersion experiment, you get to use a thermometer, take various readings an then use excell to show how the experiments complies with newton law of heat dispersion, you even show the differential equation and explain it, its an nice cheap (the thermometer must be like 10 bucks at most) experiment that is easy to understand.

NOTE you would have to explain it to your sister but the idea is very simple, a body changes its temperature towards the ambient temperature at a predictable rate.
How do we find that rate? through science!
we do a few readings on a cup of coffe
and we see this neat graph
the same graph can be expressed in math like this (cool looking math expression)
Newton found this relationship on the year such and such
so now thanks to science we can predict how temperature changes

the actuall math is hard BUT the intuition is easy to explain and the kids would not be required to do the math, only explain the end result.

http://ugrad.math.ubc.ca/coursedoc/math100/notes/diffeqs/cool.html

Hope it helps.

 

[Laurens]

Thanks all. After talking to the father of the other girl (He's a science professor at their school) we both agreed that they should do light refraction.
If anyone's interested, I'll post what they've written by mid December or so.

Sounds cool

Good luck

 

[Deleted member 619]

First, infraction is not a word.

Point of order: Infraction most certainly is a word, as is infract, although it has nothing to do with the topic under discussion.

Carry on.

 

[Inferno]

BTW the whole thing got canceled, too many people applied so they kicked out whole schools, my sisters being one of them.
Thanks to all who helped though.