Help! dd (10) needs urgent help with science project ideas

[nooka]

So dd and her friend were working on a project (using Barbies to test different hair products in a variety of conditions - snow, heat, rain etc) for her science fair. But today the friend announced she was going to go it alone .

The science fair is in two weeks and dd needs help with ideas.

If anyone has any ideas we'd be very very grateful!

It has to involve a control and at least one test subject, and it needs to 'help people' (but obviously not very much as I don't personally think that testing hair products, even on Barbies is a lifesaver!)

So far we've thought of experimenting with making Taffy (North American toffee - we're in Canada) but we need a few ideas for dd to take to her teacher and get the go ahead. Oh and it needs to be original, or at least not frequently done.

Oh and it needs to lend itself to a neat display (dd is very neat though, and she will work hard).

She seems to be quite interested in experiments involving bacteria for some reason, or the elements, or 'something a bit crazy'.

what were you going to do with taffy - tensile strength and how it varies with ingredients - or maybe with temperature?

Good science projects need to involve testing something to destruction, IMHO.

Along similar lines - different means of popping corn and their impact on percentage that pop / total volume of popped corn?

dd1 is trying to design a project using ph paper (which i'm sure used to be called litmus paper in the uk) as she's obsessed with the idea of watching it change colour...

mm, bacteria. i wonder if she could do a storage experiment and keep bread or something likely to grow mould in lots of different places to see what the effect of temperature/ moisture/ light is? should have time? she could take photos of different levels of composition/ growth? then she could have a table with her results, pictures, and (yick) the bread or whatever lined up at the front.

am loving the barbie idea though . not sure hair products work quite the same way on nylon though... but if she works out how to keep curly hair under control in alberta, it's be very helpful for me.

Ah, they did popcorn as a class a couple of years back. The taffy I thought I'd pul/not pull,not include corn syrup, and bicarb. But these are all suggestions from the science site I got the recipe from (dd made taffy for Christmas presents this year) so it's not very original. Tensile strength woudl be interesting - would that be how far could we stretch it? I loved making the taffy, the pulling was great fun :)

We're now thinking about possibly experiments with gelatin and fruit (using pineapple/kiwi and trying different things to make it set)

Or more ambitiously we looked at doing some natural dying, which she is quite excited about, but I'm not sure what we could use as a control.

They were very into the Barbie hair thing. It's sad and a bit annoying that her friend pulled out, as it was totally their own idea (and it used up a few Barbies, which I absolutely detest). I did wonder how representative it would be!

Bread is an interesting one, and she might have enough time if we used homemade bread (ie no preservatives). That's definitely worth exploring. Thanks :)

nooka, ds did a science project a few years ago with natural dying. We took a variety of fruits and vegetables, boiled them and then dyed natural wool (you can get this from a knitting shop) and tried fixing them with various things (vinegar and salt). We had lots of fun and it really lends itself to a nice colorful presentation at the end. I took photos of ds cutting up the vegetables and cooking them and photos of the vegetables to include in the board. You can vary amount of time wool sits in dye, or what type of wool/cotton you use, what you use to fix dye and temperature of dye water. We used onion skins, artichokes, red beans, blueberries, beets, red wine and a few others I can't remember.

There is a programme on uk tv called backyard science which has some great ideas, maybe there are some clips on you tube. I think it's an Aussie programme.

Can she do something similar to how clean is your house where they collect swabs and put them on agar(?) jelly and grow them?

Then she could identify dirty hotspots in random places!

Oh great, lots of ideas. Thanks everyone! I think that dd was quite sold on the dying (although what she really wants to do is surprise people with the colours - she was fascinated at the idea that Lilac flowers made a green dye.

My big sister made a rug when I was small from wool collected from local fields on the barbed wire (we lived in the UK then) and died with all sorts of wild plants, so it's a bit of a link back to my childhood I guess. Although everything is still under snow here, so I think it will have to be fruit and vegetables (or tea bags perhaps).

I'll check out that TV programme too (it always helps to see someone do the thing you are planning on).

Madwoman, would any of these projects: www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/recommender_interest_area.php?ia=Chem work for your dd? It sounds as if she is a little more scientifically orientated than my dd who is more interested in designing the display than doing the science!

Snap I'm not sure what dh (who cleans out house) would think of that!

If you boil red cabbage you get an excellent ph indicator. Just add solutions to the cabbage liquid and it changes colour.

If you have a stream or river nearby you could take her to measure the ph at different parts of the stream, really good one if there is a factory nearby at any point. She could test with both litmus and home made concoction. The control would be tapwater or shop bought water.
For display you could have a big map with all the points, some barcharts, water samples etc.

Althought the dyes sounds like more fun for an 11 year old =)

sassy - streams/ river a fab idea, but temp at the mo is ranging from 0 to -40, so she'd have to chip bits of ice off and bring them home to thaw first!

thanks for that link nooka - will get her to check it out! (and red cabbage sounds fascinating... - that would be a good display she could do at the time....)

Just remembered, tea and coffee were also used for dying. Agree with madwoman....test ph of dying solution and chart whether that affects intensity of dye.

Can you get some filter paper? Collect grass samples from different distances from the road (Om, 1m, 2m, 3m for example), use grass from your garden as the control. Then drain each sample through the filter paper with the same amount of water (ie, 50ml). You'll be left with dirt and grass in the filter paper. Remove the grass and see how the grass from the different distances becomes cleaner the further from the road they are taken. You can then take pictures of the dirty water and of the road. It will show the level of pollution from the cars on that stretch of road.

Plants soak up dye if you sand them in it. You can do celery and it ends up turning red/pink. Then as a control you could use a stick or a piece of log? Potatoes are good too.

oops Stand them in it

how long does it take for celery cw? i've seen it done for floral arrangers

couple of days?

am loving the ph of dyes to see if affects intensity of colour.

fortunately these children aren't going to be in the same fair lol.

Another different idea - semi on the bacteria line - it was on one of the dvd extras on the 'super size me' movie (you know the documentary one where he lives on Mcdonalds for a month). They took various fast food items - a burger, fries etc and put them in airtight containers for 2 weeks and showed the results - the burger had mould all over it but the fries looked exactly the same . Could you do something similar linking to healthy eating etc..

We made bugs out of batteries with a light on their nose and feelers so when you completed the circuit with them it turned the light on if the electricity was conducted. Think it was from an Usbourne book of 100 science experiments that we got in the states

You can dye things yellow with saffron and tumeric too.

Your DD's friend sounds like a bit of a cow for dumping on her.

pH paper and litmus paper are similar, but different things.pH paper turns yellow through orange to dark red and will give pHs 1 to 14. I think litmus paper just goes pink or blue depending on acid or alkali.

You could try making fairy cakes or pastry with different amounts of fat/sugar/flour to show how these ingredients influence the end product. Or bread with no sugar - it does not rise, because the yeast has nothing to feed off, so in this case sugar as a "chemical" reason for being in the recipe, not just taste.

oh, thank you for explaining the difference bikerunski - dd def has ph paper then!

Well I'm glad my thread has shared some good ideas around The teacher told dd that the natural dyes might be too much work, so she's going with the taffy. which I am sure will be fun, but I must admit I'm a bit disappointed!

Maybe we'll try it in the summer anyway.

So tests for taffy, what do you reckon? dd is thinking primarily about taste :)

A bit late, sorry, but what about the chromatography one with felt tip pens?

You get a circle of filter paper, cut a strip from the middle to the edge, colour a dot of ink in the middle, then leave over night it with the strip in water (balance the rest on top of a glass jar, water int he bottom) The ink spreads out and makes a rainbow of all the colours used to make up the ink. Simple but very very pretty!

Taffy ideas:
Taste
colour
stretchyness - does adding more of certain ingredient make it more stretchy or maybe whats the best length of time to pull it for??

How long it takes to set in different thicknesses?