Recently in Science Fair Project Ideas Category

Hands-on engineering doesn't always require high-tech materials. Armed with a stack of paper and the steps to folding a basic dart airplane, a volunteer leads a paper airplane station at a local science exposition and realizes, with surprise, that folding planes isn't something all kids know how to do! With guidance, paper airplane folding can lead to some far-flying—and fun—aerodynamics exploration.

Above top: Mary Raven demonstrates folding a basic dart paper airplane at a local Girls Inc. science fair. Bottom: Mary's daughter prepares to launch and test a different plane. How will it fly compared to a dart—and why?

Hands-on Science at Home, School, or After School!

Folding paper airplanes is a great way for students to experiment with core concepts like lift, drag, and thrust. The following science Project Ideas bundle hands-on aerodynamics exploration with paper airplane fun:

• How Far Will It Fly? Build & Test Paper Planes with Different Drag
• Why Winglets?
• Soaring Science: Test Paper Planes with Different Drag (family adaptation at Scientific American)

When Dr. Mary Raven, Microscopy Facility Director at the Neuroscience Research Institute and Neuroscience Research Institute & department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, volunteered at her daughter's after-school program's annual science fair, she set up a paper airplane station so that the girls could experiment with the aerodynamics and physics of different plane designs. To get the most out of a hands-on comparative plane folding experiment, the kids folding the planes need to be comfortable with basic folding steps. Mary assumed most of the girls would have some history with paper airplanes. To her surprise, she discovered that folding paper airplanes was not something with which all the girls had experience. In the end, the girls that visited Mary's station at the Girls Inc. science fair got a crash course in basic folding, a fun dose of engineering, a nifty takeaway (paper airplane), and a great hands-on science experience.

Science After School

Mary's daughter, now in fourth grade, has been attending a local Girls Inc. after-school program since kindergarten, and Mary has been volunteering, each year, to lead a hands-on exploration with the girls at the science fair. According to Mary, science is typically part of the program schedule at Girls Inc., and when students request their top choice classes, engaging science-themed options like a Mad Scientist club are part of the available offering. But science really heats up with the yearly science expo when the girls get hands-on with a wide range of science and engineering activities.

"When you think science fair, you might think girls calmly presenting their projects" says Mary. "But the Girls Inc. science fair is more of a hands-on science show. Imagine 150 excited girls aged 5-12 running from station to station, and you have our Girls Inc. science fair."

At the science fair, various exploratory stations are set up for the girls to cycle through. This year, Mary says the stations included a math station, one focused on earthquakes, one on rocket launchers, one on hand washing (and visualizing germs with Glo Germ), a microscope-based station, and one featuring an iguana. The diverse offerings give the girls the chance to experience a number of different areas of science—who knows what might catch a young girl's imagination and spark lifelong interest—but as Mary can attest, 150 participants cycling through a hands-on science activity can be a challenge!

"I don't work with children for a living, and having one girl at home in no way prepares you for the experience of 150 excited girls asking every question imaginable," admits Mary. "I've tried several projects with the girls (prism optics, sun-prints, brain dissections), and I'm usually disappointed in my ability to share anything meaningful with a mass of swarming girls."

This year, Mary spotted a project at Science Buddies and thought it might be perfect for the science fair. "When I saw the experiment How Far Will It Fly? Build & Test Paper Planes with Different Drag posted on Science Buddies, I thought, 'hey, that looks like it might adapt to the wild of the Girls Inc. science fair.'"

Preparing for Hands-on Science with Kids

Having selected her activity for the fair, Mary spent time determining how best to convert the science "project" (something written with a single student performing a science experiment in mind) into a short-term hands-on activity that girls could do on the spot. When converting a full-scale project to an immediate and short-term activity, understanding both the audience and the main science concepts you want to get across is important. You want to craft the activity in such a way that the students are engaged and that there is a clear scientific takeaway.

Knowing in advance that girls would cycle through at varying times and that those at her station would all be in various stages of the activity at the same time, Mary planned ahead. She first made a poster that showed the basic steps for folding a simple dart plane. "I have learned the girls don't stop to read words," says Mary, "but I thought the examples might help."

She then gathered supplies: a stack of paper, a ruler, tape, scissors, and a clipboard for recording results. "I marked off the gym in 5 foot increments," says Mary, "and then with my poster board set up and papers at the ready, I waited for the girls to appear." Mary was ready, but she hadn't counted on the fact that not all of the girls had folded planes before. Even with the steps for folding a dart plane on the poster, folding the plane proved a challenge for some of the girls. "The first few girls trickled into the gym, and I quickly learned I was going to be walking the girls through folding the planes."

On the spot, Mary had to adapt and refocus her hands-on engineering activity. Testing multiple plane designs might not be possible; certainly, building three different planes with each girl was out of the question, says Mary. "I was a little surprised at how unfamiliar the girls were at folding paper. I was also a little disturbed to learn they called lengthwise folds 'hot dog' and widthwise folds 'hamburger,'" recalls Mary. Still, Mary and the girls stuck with it. "Some of the girls wanted me to fold [the plane] for them, but I think folding is a great 3D spatial skill, and using their own hands was important."

Despite the rocky start, "all the girls were able to fold a plane with help," says Mary. Not only were they able to fold a plane, but they were excited when they finished their planes. The immediate satisfaction of the project was evident for the girls who struggled through plane folding at Mary's station. "They were thrilled at how well the dart flew once it was complete."

Putting the Science in the Air

Rather than building multiple planes each, each girl flew her plane three times, and they took measurements and determined the average. Mary then guided the girls in modifying their original plane. "We added flaps in the back, and I asked the girls what they thought the flaps would do to the plane. None of the girls were certain what would happen, but when they tested the plane, they quickly realized the plane didn't fly well at all," says Mary. "They were able to deduce that the flaps were somehow blocking the airflow, and some girls realized that unfolding the flaps restored the plane's flying capability. I thought that was a great result!"

"I think making the planes was empowering for the girls," says Mary. "It gave them a tool to experiment with. They were excited to try flying it and to determine the best way to launch it. As much as I like the data collection and analysis part of the experiment, my favorite part was how the girls seemed to understand the manipulation. The concept of drag wasn't something they had heard of, and it isn't something they were likely to pick-up from a diagram. Still, after a couple of plane flights, they had a mental image."

And that's what it's all about, seeing the science in action, the cause and effect, the principles of science, like drag, and realizing that changing just one variable can make a dramatic difference. For Mary, this year's event was eye-opening, but she is happy with how it turned out and happy with the project she used as the basis for her activity. "I liked the aerodynamics (activity) because it is mostly hands-on interactive time, and the girls had something they could keep (the plane). Waiting is a killer in this format, and they love having something to take home."

"Overall, I'm very happy with the results although I still haven't achieved my vision of somehow ordering the disorder at my science fair table. If I had 4 volunteers, maybe?"

The Importance of a Single Volunteer and Role Model

We can't wait to see what Mary tries at next year's science fair, but we are sure that the girls who passed through her station this year benefited from having an interested adult take time to demonstrate, explain, guide, and encourage them to explore, question, and hypothesize.

"I think it is really important that the girls have contact with female scientist and engineers (or any scientist/engineer)," notes Mary. "Girls are very influenced by the female role models in their life. If you ask them why they are considering the career choice they are exploring, it is usually a female role model or relative that leads them to consider the option."

Note: After the fair, Mary suggested to the after-school program that enrichment programs in origami or in plane folding might be a great addition to the offerings. Do your kids and students fold paper airplanes now and again? If not, or if you are not sure, open up the basic dart instructions and grab a stack of paper. There are planes to be folded!

The above photos were taken during the creation of a geodesic dome as a family math and science activity over spring break. The dome resembles the dome created in the "Dome Sweet Dome" math Project Idea, but we used straws instead of newspaper, a different assembly process, and threw in some duct tape customization for visual effect.

A model dome like this can be made in any size (as long as you figure out the relative lengths of the struts). This one is pretty big! Getting it in the car was definitely a challenge. The dome didn't weather its time squooshed in the trunk very well—a reminder that inexpensive plastic straws bend and/or crack under too much stress. (Stress-testing the strength of geodesic dome was not really our ultimate goal.)

Building the dome was a great hands-on math exploration project, but it took a good bit of time to work through all the necessary steps to prepare the struts for assembly. Each of my kids enjoyed different aspects of the project, but watching it come together in the end was awesome!

Whether beams and bolts or brick-based, toy building systems give kids (and tinkerers of all ages!) the chance to explore engineering, mechanics, and, today, even robotics. In the "Stair Master: Build an All-Terrain Robot" robotics Project Idea, students use LEGO® Mindstorms® to experiment with different kinds of wheel alternatives. Not every wheel suits every need. Identifying the challenge or problem is an important step in the engineering design process!

What does it take to build a successful all-terrain robot? The best way to find out and to test your theory about what will work is to put it to the test!

Our "today in Science History" posts makes students, teachers, and parents aware of important discoveries and scientists in history and help connect science history to hands-on K-12 science exploration that students can do today. To follow along, join us at Facebook or at Google+. These frequent science history tidbits can be great for class, dinner, or car-ride discussion!

What color flowers do you want this week? Nature produces a wide array of wonderful colors, but plant biology opens the way for a whimsical "choose your own color" flower experiment, perfect for home or the classroom.

April showers, May flowers, and Mother's Day... flowers may be out in abundance at your grocery or corner market, but not all flowers bundled and labeled for sale are straight from the garden.

This science mom's daughter was excited by the colorful flowers she saw at the store, including green carnations. Her mother took the moment of interest to talk about how plants get their nutrients—and how plant science is related to some of the "colors" of flowers for sale.

"I explained that many of the flowers she was seeing were not really like that in nature. So we talked about how flowers get nutrients and water, and then decided we'd try to make our own colored flowers. She actually came up with the idea of putting them in colored water after we talked about how plants drink and transport water!"

This mother/daughter discussion is a great reminder that a little science discussion can go a long way! Stopping to talk about what's going on and how science explains what has captured a kid's imagination helps kids make important connections between science and the real world and also encourages them to think about how that information can be used or tested. Sometimes your student might surprise you by assimilating the information and coming back with questions or suggestions, as this student did. She made the leap to wondering what would happen if they put flowers in colored water, and her mother took the next step—hands-on science at home.

"Of course, one color was not enough in our household. We needed to make a rainbow of colors... Seven seemed like a bit much to me so we compromised and did three."

Flower Science at Your House

Don't bypass those white carnations! They offer a wonderful opportunity for hands-on science with your kids. Will other white flowers work the same way? Give it a try and find out! The "Suck It Up: Capillary Action of Water in Plants" Project Idea will help guide your home experiment. For another version of this family project, see the Science Buddies "Staining Science: Capillary Action of Dyed Water in Plants" experiment at Scientific American.

What a great science activity to do this week with the kids in celebration of Mother's Day and Spring! The activity doesn't take much time or preparation, but the results may brighten up your kitchen table.

The Suit in Iron Man 3

No spoilers here, but there has been plenty of talk about the suit in the Iron Man 3 movie. In fact, word has it that there are a plethora of suits that have been designed between the last movie and this installment. With so many iterations in between, it will be exciting to see how the suit has evolved and what features it sports now.

If you were the designer, what kind of suit would you build? Which reactor would you use? What color armor and why? Right now, you have your chance to be an Iron Man engineer and build your own suit on the Verizon FiOS Iron Man site. Show off your robotics, tech, engineering, and super hero savvy as you craft your own custom Iron Man suit for a chance to win prizes from Verizon FiOS.

Thank you to everyone who clicked through to view special Verizon FiOS and Marvel Iron Man 3 video footage earlier this week on behalf of Science Buddies. Thanks to the resounding support from members of the community who trust, use, and rely on Science Buddies for their projects, classroom, and family science activities, we collected a phenomenal number of views in 24 hours—all in the name of K-12 science literacy!

Through their View to Give program, Verizon FiOS contributed $10,000 to Science Buddies to help us better support the more than fifteen million students, teachers, and students who visit Science Buddies each year.

Making Science Connections

Marvel's Iron Man 3 launches in theaters today, May 3. With the new release, fans will find out what's next for Tony Stark and Iron Man. As the Iron Man story (and the suit) evolves, there will be plenty of new angles for making science connections and exploring the kinds of real-world science and engineering that shows up in the movie.

Whether talking about science before you head to the movies helps get you and your students in the mood for Iron Man action or whether you are looking for ways to continue the thrill of the big screen tech, engineering, and physics that help define the Iron Man saga, the following resources, project ideas, and articles may help:

Note: Iron Man 3 is rated PG-13. Parents can learn more about suggested viewing at Common Sense Media.

Need to catch up or refresh your Iron Man memory? See Iron Man and Iron Man 2.

Roll the dice in a fun hands-on simulation of an isotope's decay to better understand the way scientists date mind-boggling old matter.

A Winning Math and Geology Combo!

Students will need a 100 'marked' dice (a piece of tape on one side of each) to conduct the "How Old Is That Rock? Roll the Dice & Use Radiometric Dating to Find Out" hands-on geology project. With dice at the ready, students can roll their way to better understanding of how an isotope decays.

When it comes to talking about time and age on a geologic scale, our everyday watches, clocks, and units of measurement fall short. We understand minutes and days and years. We can count seconds and even measure smaller units that help us evaluate the outcome of a race. We understand centuries based on family trees and history books, and we have a conceptual sense of a few thousand years. But when it comes to talking about a rock that may be billions of years old, what do we do? What scale can we use to help evaluate an object's timeline and history?

The Big Picture

For geologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, and anthropologists, objects of study are often talked about in terms of thousands, millions, or even billions and positioned within the geological timescale of Earth. Dating an artifact found on a dig or evaluating the age of a rock requires special kinds of calculations and assessment. One important approach used in geologic dating involves radioactivity.

By evaluating the number of parent and daughter isotopes of an element that are present in an artifact, and by relating that number to the known half-life of the isotope, scientists can date the object. Students often learn about radiocarbon dating, a form of radiometric dating based on the presence of carbon-14, which has a known rate of decay (or half-life). Another form of radiometric dating involves potassium, which has a half-life of 1.25 billion years and changes to argon as it decays.

Putting Radiometric Dating in Perspective

The new "How Old Is That Rock? Roll the Dice & Use Radiometric Dating to Find Out" geology Project Idea helps students better understand how radiometric dating works by using a hands-on game to simulate the process. Using dice, each one marked with one side that represents a daughter isotope, students can roll their way through the decay cycle of a hypothetical element. As they record their rolls on a data chart, students create and evaluate the decay curve for the isotope.

After rolling the 100 dice until all of the parents have transformed and studying the rate of decay of the imagined isotope, students can work backwards and deduce the age of a sample created by a friend or family member by correlating available data and comparing it to the decay curve.

This hands-on project is an innovative way for kids to visualize the half-life decay process and the statistics involved in determining rates of decay and geological age.

Verizon FiOS teams up with Science Buddies in support of science literacy. Fiber optics technology offers high-speed data delivery, but what's going on in a fiber optics system? Look to the 'light' for answers with hands-on science projects that let students explore the physics of light to better understand how fiber optics work.

1,000,000,000 Views to Support Science Buddies and Science Literacy

On Monday, April 29, Verizon FiOS will be showing exclusive video footage from Iron Man 3. For every view of the video during the 24-hour period, FiOS will make a donation to Science Buddies as part of its View to Give program. Verizon FiOS will donate $0.01 to Science Buddies for every view—all the way up to 1,000,000 views!

With Verizon's FiOS service, voice, video, and data are transmitted over three wavelengths in the infrared spectrum. According to Verizon, one of the bands handles television delivery, one sends all other data, and one receives all other data, whether it involves video, telephone, or Internet. Each single fiber optic cable can handle the data needs for 32 FiOS subscribers.

Science Buddies is excited to have been chosen as a recipient for Verizon FiOS's Iron Man 3 View to Give campaign in support of science literacy and the value of science fair!

As fans of the Marvel comics series know, the movie suits do not necessarily match up, exactly, to the comics-based storyline. In the comics, for example, the Mark III sports a fiber optic network, in addition to other high-tech and bio-infused features, and is invisible to electronic detection systems—and to the naked eye. The Mark III in Iron Man didn't offer invisibility. Neither did versions IV, V, or VI in Iron Man 2. It will be interesting to see how the suit evolves in Iron Man 3—and who ends up wearing the suit. (No spoilers here!)

There is ongoing research and development using fiber optics to make things "invisible," but when streaming your favorite movie using a fiber optics-enabled high speed data service, your goal is all about seeing—and seeing in real-time. When Iron Man puts on the suit and heads out, he relies on data shown in his heads up display (HUD) to monitor what's going on with the suit and other information, with the help of his home-based AI system. With the HUD, he sees the data floating right in front of him (and communicates directly with his AI by voice). A data transmission slow-down (or lag time) could be disastrous for the suited super hero.

Both in the air and in the lab, Stark needs near-instant access to data. He wants it fast, and, when you are streaming data to one of your systems or devices while watching a movie or playing an online multiplayer game, so do you! To stream data fast enough that you don't have to think about the fact that you are not sitting in a theater but are instead depending on the encoding, transmission, and recoding of packets of digital data, you need speed.

You, like Tony Stark, want your data at the speed of light, and fiber optics is all about light.

Light Waves and Physics

In physics, there are laws describing the behavior of light. Unimpeded, with nothing in its way, light can travel a long way—to the end of the universe and beyond. And with nothing in its way, light travels at a set speed. This speed, the speed at which light travels in a vacuum, is considered a constant in physics—299,792,458 meters per second. Translated to car speeds, the speed of light is more than 600,000,000 miles per hour!

Knowing the speed of light, physicists and astronomers can calculate both time and distance. Light from the moon, for example, takes 1 second to reach the Earth, so the moon is one light-second away. Light from the sun, which is much farther away, takes 8 minutes to reach the Earth. Extrapolate to think about how far light can travel over the course of a year, and you have the distance of a light-year.

But what happens when something gets in the way? Light can be impeded by absorption, refraction, or reflection. Refraction refers to the bending of light when a light wave enters a medium that has a slower speed. The change in speed causes the light to bend at an angle that is directly related to the difference at which the speed of light travels in one medium compared to the speed light travels in the new medium. As light moves between two mediums with different speeds, the path of the light is altered as it hits the new medium. Have you ever reached into a bowl of water (or into a shallow pool) to pick something up, and your reach wasn't quite on target for where the object was actually sitting on the bottom? The image of that object was refracted because light moves more slowly though water. Physicists use Snell's law to calculate the angle at which the light will bend—the angle of refraction.

Back in the days of "dial-up" Internet service, connectivity and data traveled electrically through traditional phone lines and using standard copper wires. A series of advanced high-speed Internet delivery options have transformed what we expect from data service and made possible the range of anywhere, anytime applications many of us use. The faster your service, the faster you will receive the data you want—when you stream a video, for example, or when you play a popular online game like Minecraft.

Much of today's data delivery is propelled and carried by pulses of light through fiber optic tubes, hollow tubes of glass that are incredibly thin (similar to a strand of hair) and incredibly strong. Fiber optic tubes can be used to transmit any kind of digital data, from voice to text to video to pictures. When broken down for transfer, data is data, but fiber optics can handle massive amounts of data and transfer them at great speed.

What does fiber optics have to do with the physics of light? A lot!

If you think about the bending of light, the way, for example, that a straw submerged in a glass of sugar water will appear bent when you look at the portion "in" the water compared to the portion out of the water, then you might think that light transmitting data down a narrow tube would potentially lose speed if it was obstructed over and over or refracted over and over again by the walls of the tube itself. But light doesn't always refract the same direction. If light moves from a slower medium to a faster medium, it refracts differently than when it moves the other direction, from a faster to slower medium.

By calculating what is referred to as the critical angle of refraction, physicists can take advantage of the principles of refraction to keep light moving at a near-constant speed down a fiber optic cable. The glass cables in fiber optics have been engineered with an exterior coating called the cladding that is used to reflect light traveling down the cable at an angle that will allow the light to travel great distance, at great speed, and with minimal loss of speed. Pretty cool!

Speed of Light Science

Exploring the speed of light might sound impossible, especially given the speed of light, and the process of creating fiber optic cables is one that requires an immaculate production facility and extreme precision. Students may not have access to a "clean room" and obviously are not moving at the speed of light, but they can get hands-on learning more about the physics of light, refraction, Snell's law, and the speed of light in the following science projects:

• "Measuring Sugar Content of a Liquid with a Laser Pointer": using the physics of refraction and Snell's law, you can determine the amount of sugar in a clear liquid solution using a laser pointer and a hollow prism. Sugar water may sound light years from Iron Man, but this project offers an excellent hands-on demonstration of refraction and what you want to avoid when transmitting data—getting caught up in the gunk!
• "Using a Laser to Measure the Speed of Light in Gelatin": you don't need access to a lab or high-tech tools to measure the speed of light! With a protractor, a laser pointer, and a container of gelatin, you can conduct your own measurements at home and see, in the beam of the laser, what happens when light refracts.
• "Measuring the Speed of 'Light' with a Microwave Oven": in a microwave, light waves are impacted by interference when waves reflect off the walls of the microwave and bounce into each other. What happens if you remove the rotation tray, which is designed to help balance the distribution of light waves, and cook an egg white? You will have another way to measure the speed of light! You will also have two piles of gooey cooked egg whites. It isn't pretty, but it's physics!
• "Laser Safety Guide": before working with a laser for any science project, please review the safety guide.

Speed of Light Science Careers

Students curious about careers related to fiber optics technology can learn more in the following science career profiles:

• Photonics Engineer
• Photonics Technician
• Materials Scientist and Engineer
• Wind Turbine Service Technician
• Network Systems & Data Communications Analyst
• Electrician

Pop Culture and Movie Science

For more about ways to tie student interest in Iron Man to hands-on science, see:

• "Excitement About Iron Man Fuels Student Science Inquiry"
• "Iron Man: Behind the Science"

Note: Iron Man 3 is rated PG-13. Parents can learn more about suggested viewing at Common Sense Media.

April 25 is National DNA Day, a day that commemorates the 60th anniversary of DNA's double helix discovery in 1953 and the completion of the human genome project in 2003. We all boil down, genetically, to chains of DNA—each of us with an individual DNA sequence. Take time this week to talk with your students and kids about DNA, its history, the scientists who helped crack the code, and ways that students at all levels can get hands-on with DNA-related science.

DNA's familiar "double helix" structure is shown above in the illustration from the U. S. National Library of Medicine. This week marks the 60th year since the first identification and modeling of DNA's structure. Celebrate the molecule that encodes all life with hands-on science activities and exploration. Kids of all ages can learn more about DNA!

Family DNA Activity

The Genes in a Bottle^TM kit from Bio-Rad Laboratories makes DNA exploration a recipe for cool family science fun! Pair the kit with our project to guide the activity, and then capture and preserve your DNA in a necklace that puts your genetic code out there for everyone to see! See "DNA Show and Tell: Biotechnology You Can Wear Around Your Neck" for more information or check out the kit
at Amazon.com.

Women in Science: Rosalind Franklin

Are you curious about Rosalind Franklin and her role in the discovery of the structure of DNA? Franklin's story has been given new light in recent years. The following books and film offer more information:

 

 

DNA, and the information it encodes, not only makes each individual organism unique, but also is responsible for certain similarities and traits in groups of organisms. A rose smells the way it does because of DNA. The color of your eyes has something to do with DNA. Whether or not you are at a higher risk of certain health problems may boil down to certain genetic markers you have or do not have. Although genomes (the sum total of DNA needed to encode an organism) are usually copied and acted on in predictable ways, occasionally these mechanisms go awry. Individual stretches of DNA can change or be altered. Transformations, mutations, and other errors in a person's DNA may result in differences in how people respond to a medicine, for example, or may, over long evolutionary time, result in entirely new species.

Encoding the template for a whole organism sounds like a lot of responsibility for a single kind of molecule, but deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) does just that!

Finding the Double Helix

There were many scientists involved in identifying and isolating DNA and tying it to understanding of heredity and chromosomes. The history of DNA-related discoveries and breakthroughs dates back to the first isolation of DNA by Friedrich Miescher in 1869. Miescher extracted a DNA sample from cast-off, pus-covered bandages. It sounds kind of gross, but Miescher's discovery fueled further research and inquiry. Until the structure of the DNA molecule was established and modeled, however, scientists were unable to fully explain and further explore the role of DNA.

That all changed in 1953.

The publication of both Photo 51, an x-ray diffraction photo (taken in 1952) showing the crystalline structure of DNA, and of a series of papers describing the structure of DNA in Nature in 1953 was a pivotal moment in science. Photo 51 was taken by Rosalind Franklin, a scientist working to create a crystal of the DNA molecule that would enable x-ray diffraction studies and, she hoped, enable her to deduce the structure of DNA. The x-ray pattern captured by Photo 51 revealed, for the first time, the ladder-like structure and winding helix shape we now associate with DNA.

The findings published in the same 1953 issue of Nature as Franklin's photo were from James Watson and Francis Crick. After seeing Franklin's photo, Watson and Crick were able to make a model of DNA that showed the molecule's structure. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on DNA. (Franklin, whose photo may have cracked the code, died in 1958, her contributions then largely unacknowledged.)

April 25 is National DNA Day, a day that commemorates the 60th anniversary of the double helix discovery in 1953 and the completion of the human genome project by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in 2003.

Breaking It Down

You may have played with a model of the DNA structure, or maybe you wear a visual representation on a t-shirt or have a poster or model hanging on your bedroom wall. A helix is defined as "an object having a three-dimensional shape like that of a wire wound uniformly around a cylinder or cone." In most DNA, two helical strands are wound together creating a double helix. Individual DNA molecules (or strands) are each constructed of two long polymers, chains of repeating units made up of pairs of four nucleotides that appear in various repeating combinations. These nucleotides are adenine ("A"), thymine ("T"), guanine ("G"), and cytosine ("C"). These letters give scientists the ABCs (or ATGCs) of DNA—it's a four-letter alphabet which underwrites all known life on Earth!

Armed with knowledge of the structure, composition, and pattern of DNA strands, scientists are able to tackle questions both about history and about the future. Students can, too!

Students "Do" DNA

From fun home activities that let students and parents explore (and show off!) their own DNA to sophisticated projects for advanced student exploration, Science Buddies has a range of Project Ideas that enable students to better understand the role of DNA and encourage them to explore questions related to genetics, genomics, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. You might be surprised at what your fruits and vegetables drawer will yield in terms of visible DNA discovery, but that's just the tip of the genome!

Some DNA-related Science Buddies Project Ideas to explore:

• "Discovering DNA: Do Your Cheek Cells & a Strawberry Both Have DNA?": use a home-friendly Bio-Rad kit to extract and compare DNA from your cheek and from a strawberry.
• "Extracting Onion DNA": extract and spool DNA from an onion using household dishwashing detergent or shampoo.
• "Do-It-Yourself DNA": another procedure to explore DNA extraction with strawberries. .
• "Forensic Science: Building Your Own Tool for Identifying DNA": build a homemade electrophoresis gel chamber and experiment with an important biotechnology procedure often used to separate DNA from other substances.
• "Who Done It? DNA Fingerprinting and Forensics": explore the banding patterns produced in DNA fingerprinting to match a fictitious subject's DNA to a crime scene.
• "What Makes a DNA Fingerprint Unique?": use online tools to compare DNA fingerprints from randomly generated DNA. With only four nucleotides in each DNA, how is everyone's DNA different?
• "Use DNA Sequencing to Trace the Blue Whale's Evolutionary Tree": trace the blue whale's family tree using genomic sequences in the GenBank database and the BLAST search tool.
• "How Much DNA Can You Pack into a Cell?": use online databases to investigate to see if there is a correlation between genome size and cell nucleus size.
• "A Magnetic Primer Designer": experiment with the process scientists use to copy or clone a DNA sample for further study.
• "From Genes to Genetic Diseases: What Kinds of Mutations Matter?": investigate why some gene mutations cause genetic diseases.
• "Drugs & Genetics: Why Do Some People Respond to Drugs Differently than Others?": use an online pharmacogenomics database to research a drug of interest and investigate why a genetic mutation might account for differences in how an individual responds to the drug.
• "The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project": use an online bioinformatics tools to perform "virtual experiments" on real data sets of gene expression data.
• "Trace Your Ancient Ancestry Through DNA": an advanced independent project that lets students explore their DNA history.

Extend the Conversation

There are still questions for scientists to ask and answers to be unlocked through further study of DNA. Just last year, samples of DNA with four strands were discovered. See this article in Nature to shake up your understanding of DNA just a bit. What happens when you square or quad your genetic code?

• For more in-depth information about DNA, see "DNA Is a Structure That Encodes Biological Information".
• For more information about the science history timeline that goes along with DNA, see "Unraveling the Human Genome: 6 Molecular Milestones".
• For new findings about other molecules that can store and pass on genetic information, see "Move over DNA: Six new molecules can carry genes" (New Scientist)

Getting girls inspired about engineering can be as simple as giving them the tools and a fun hands-on challenge to solve. Thanks to community support from Northrop Grumman, a group of Maryland middle school girls tested their marble run mettle —and had a great time doing it!

Whether using foam tubing or an assortment of found and recycled materials (as in the photo above), creating a marble run or marble roller coaster is great hands-on engineering for students of all ages! Throw in some duct tape to spice things up, and you've got a hard-to-resist creative engineering activity for today's DIY duct tape crowd. Bonus: you don't need a lot of supplies or a lot of space. Even a hallway will work!

As students explore construction challenges, design issues, principles of physics, and engineering problems while creating a marble run, they also intuitively put the engineering design process in action. They think creatively. They innovate. They prototype, test, and then make changes. And they have fun.

Fostering the Engineering Spirit

Thanks to volunteers from Northrop Grumman, students from Maryvale Preparatory Middle School were recently treated to a hands-on engineering activity and challenge. The girls were given thirty minutes to build a roller coaster out of two pieces of foam tubing, a roll of masking tape, and five plastic cups. The wall and bleachers in the gym where they were conducting the activity were also fair game. Points were to be awarded for incorporating different kinds of loops and spirals in the design as well as for having the marble land in a cup at the end of its run.

With the clock ticking, the challenge was on, and the girls quickly started taping and looping their tubing, experimenting with different elevations, and repeatedly dropping marbles through the tubing to test their in-progress designs. This engineering activity is one that lets students explore principles of physics and design through trial and error. If the marble flies out of the tubing rather than continuing down the track, something needs to be altered. Which variable is causing the problem? The exploration also encourages them to think creatively. With limited materials on hand, what options are available for stabilizing the marble run? What do you attach it to?

Supporting Science in the Community

For Laura Lam, senior quality engineer at Northrop Grumman, and Christina Lloyd, quality engineer at Northrop Grumman, time spent at the Brooklandville middle school was time spent giving back to the community in support of science, technology, engineering, and math literacy (STEM)—and in support of females in engineering. Lam and Lloyd visited Maryvale Preparatory as part of Northrop Grumman's DiscoverE program, a program that supports STEM education in local schools. Through DiscoverE, Northrop Grumman engineers visit community schools and lead hands-on classroom activities designed to inspire and excite students about engineering and technical career paths.

This was Lam's sixth year bringing a hands-on engineering activity to students at Maryvale Preparatory. Each year, Lam says she chooses a project that "highlights for the girls that they can be real problem solvers." Building confidence and giving students a good look at what engineering "means" is important, says Lam, who thinks students, both boys and girls, are sometimes scared of going into engineering. More exposure to the kinds of creative and fun problem solving at the heart of engineering helps students better understand what engineering is really all about. "Doing these projects each year is fun for them and also helps them see that they can solve real-life issues," Lam adds.

In years past, Lam has led students in building newspaper towers, developing boats from plastic wrap and straws, designing an environmentally friendly soda can holder, and constructing towers from dry spaghetti and gum drops. Each activity poses a challenge, uses common materials, invites collaboration, and lets students dive in as they race to find the best, fastest, most stable, or most innovative solution. Clear objectives for "winning" are given at the start, like this year's point system by which teams earned points for integrating specific design elements or successfully completing a specific task.

"Every year I am amazed at the creativity of these young girls," says Lam. "They are in 6th through 8th grade, but they come up with some really creative ideas, and they work really well together."

For Lam, visiting the school and helping excite and inspire students is one way she is actively helping to encourage young women to explore STEM fields. Like other female engineers, Lam recognizes the importance of girls having and meeting real-world role models. "When I was trying to decide what I wanted to major in when I was going to college, my Dad (who was also an engineer) took me to his place of employment and let me spend the day with some other female engineers," says Lam. "Seeing other women in the field helped me to solidify my decision to go into engineering... and I'm so glad I did."

Lam participates in DiscoverE to give young women in her community the same kind of support and encouragement. "I certainly hope that over the years that I have been doing this at least a couple girls have been inspired to go into the engineering field as a result."

Bring it to Your Community or Home

If you are inspired by the engineering activity Lam and Lloyd did with students at Maryvale Preparatory, consider doing a similar science or engineering activity with a group or class of students in your own area or at home! You might be surprised to find that local teachers would welcome the opportunity to have you come in and help with a hands-on science or engineering activity in class.

The following Project Ideas can easily be adapted for use in a short-term, hands-on engineering activity:

• Roller Coaster Marbles: How Much Height to Loop the Loop?: build a roller coaster for marbles using foam pipe insulation and experiment with the relationship between height and loops.
• The Leaning Tower of Pasta: make a strong, lightweight tower using only uncooked spaghetti and white glue.
• Circus-Trick Science: How to Balance Anything: use marshmallows and skewer sticks to learn about balance.
• The Effect of Bridge Design on Weight Bearing Capacity: explore the strength of different bridge designs by making (and breaking) bridges from wooden sticks and straws.
• Strength in Numbers?: experiment with materials and strength using dry spaghetti.
• Newspaper Tower *: how tall you can build a tower using only two sheets of newspaper and no glues, adhesives, or binding materials?
• Paper Bridge for Pennies *: with a few limited materials, build a bridge of a certain length that can support 100 pennies.

Remember, when you take a science project into the classroom, focus on what can be accomplished in a fixed amount of time—and on what the students can learn by putting the project in action.

For more insight and parent perspective on hands-on engineering activities, see "Roller Coaster Science: Marbles, Tubes, and Loops" and "Building Bridges."
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Living on a farm can be smelly business. But stinky piles of biowaste can hold the key to an alternative energy solution that can have a major impact on a farm's available energy and power. Get inspired by one dairy's success and find out how you can explore the potential of turning waste, trash, and other unexpected bio sources into alternative energy.

Image: The hands-on "From Trash to Gas: Biomass Energy" science Project Idea lets students experiment with the production of biogas and which sources of biomass generate the most biogas.

Know Your Biofuels!

There are three types of biofuel that often emerge in a discussion of biochemistry-based alternative energy: biogas, biodiesel, and bioalcohols. These are all green solutions, some of them straight from the farm—literally! So what's the difference?

• Biofuel: the umbrella term for alternative and renewable fuels (liquids, solids or gases) that are derived from organic matter.
• Biogas: fuel that is produced by the anaerobic breakdown of organic matter or waste (like manure).
• Bioalcohols: these alcohols, like bioethanol, are created by the fermentation of carbohydrates in crops like corn and sugarcane. Bioalcohols can also be created from the fermentation of "cellulosic biomass" from non-food sources like grasses and trees.
• Biodiesel: made from vegetable or soybean oils or other natural oils and fats, biodiesel can be used as a diesel alternative or as a diesel additive.

A recent story in the New York Times spotlighted Fair Oaks Farms, an Indiana-based, family-owned-and-operated dairy that has turned its five million pounds of daily cow manure into a sustainable stream of natural energy that powers its dairy and farm operations as well as a fleet of tractor-trailer trucks that make daily deliveries to milk processing facilities. According to the story, shifting the delivery trucks to also use the farm-produced biogas was a logical next step in Fair Oaks' alternative energy planning and helped the dairy find a way to convert potential biofuel that was being left unused into an environmentally-conscious solution—one with a marked impact on fossil fuel use and emissions. The dairy estimates that their use of biofuel for the delivery trucks will "take two million gallons of diesel off the highway each year."

For Fair Oaks, upcycling biowaste is a solution that makes sense, from the piles of manure up. They already have the bio source (the cows), and the piles of waste accumulate daily, whether they use them or not. Their success, and the amount of self-sustaining power they are generating, tells an inspiring story about the potential of biofuel. On the level of a single farm, Fair Oaks has created an ecosystem that connects their herds to the production of both their dairy products and of the energy that runs the whole operation.

Making Connections

Turning biowaste into natural gas is one approach to creating an alternative energy solution. Cow manure contains methane, a biogas, which can be captured and used for energy. Other sources of biomass are also possible for use in the production of biofuels or agrofuels. Corn for gas? Your compost bin as a source of household power?

Students who are interested in biochemistry-based alternative and renewable energy can explore issues, challenges, and possible approaches in the following hands-on science Project Ideas:

• "From Trash to Gas: Biomass Energy": what kinds of biomass are good for making biogas? The results will be visible as methane builds up and inflates balloons used in the collection devices!
• "Burning Biofuels: Comparing Nonrenewable and Renewable Fuels": do agrofuels produce the same amount of energy as nonrenewable fuels? Compare vegetable oil and motor oil to explore.
• "Turn Plants into Biofuel with the Power of Enzymes *": is the production of biofuel too slow? Investigate problems related to the time it takes for cellulosic ethanol production reactions to occur and see whether or not an enzyme can make a difference in the production process.
• "Go Green by Growing Green: How to Extract Energy from Grass": is potential alternative energy as close as your backyard? Grow different kinds of grasses to see which ones can be used as good sources of biomass energy.

To read the full New York Times story, see: "Dairy Finds a Way to Let Cows Power Trucks."

Interest in student robotics continues to grow. Find out how to get your (and your kids') feet wet with hands-on robotics engineering projects and activities. From taking robotic steps with LEGO® to upcycling toothbrushes or recouping the innards of cast-off electronics, robotics projects can turn kids on to creative thinking and STEM tinkering! Start at the beginning with simple bots that require only a few parts, and then move on to increasingly more innovative and sophisticated designs, building know-how with each new bot. Watch your student's understanding of robotics engineering grow bot by bot!

"You did what with your brother's toothbrush?"

Nestled in between April showers and May flowers is something much less natural and more gritty, much more tech-savvy, sci-fi-inspired, and DIY oriented—National Robotics Week, April 6-14.

A growing wave of young tinkerers and builders are exploring robotics, often thanks to the availability of after-school robotics clubs and programs and summer science camps. Meeting the needs of both students interested in transforming their bot-building into school science projects and students and parents looking for guided home robotics challenges and explorations, the Science Buddies Robotics Area continues to expand, and there are more new K-12 robotics Project Ideas in development and coming soon!

Inspiring Young Engineers

Ben Finio, a scientist at Science Buddies, recently helped lead a group of kids in building awesome light-following Bristlebots at a Makerspace gathering in Ithaca, NY. Bristlebots, originally popularized by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, are DIY versions of vibrating robotic bugs. With a few simple components, possibly even upcycling a cast-off handheld device from the household junk drawer, kids and families can make their own vibrating bugs with toothbrush bristle bodies and legs. The upgraded model Finio invented and helped students build (shown in the video above) uses two motors and two light sensors to create a bot that will trail around after a light source. Talk about a cool tech spin on classic tag-along toys!

The brand new "Racing BristleBots: On Your Mark. Get Set. Go!" robotics Project Idea helps students turn Bristlebot building into a comparative science project. In this project, students are guided in building a base-model Bristlebot and then investigate the impact of using different materials. How will different toothbrush bristle designs affect the speed of the bot? Students will build and compare two bots in the project, but the project can easily be extended as students make their way through the toothbrush aisle at the grocery store in a quest for the best head of bristles for bot building (as opposed to teeth cleaning!).

Finio will be bringing a version of his light-tracking Bristlebot to Science Buddies in the future, but parents and students can get started now with their first Bristlebots. What other enhancements can you make to a bristlebot to change the core design?

Where to Start with Robotics

As is often the case with engineering and tinkering-style projects, Finio assembled his Light-following Bristlebot from assorted parts. Knowing how and what to take from disparate places to enable a successful hands-on robotics exploration can be a stumbling block for many parents and teachers who want to give their kids and students robotics opportunities but are unsure where to begin and what to buy.

Finio encourages parents, especially those with younger kids, to look for robotics projects that involve only a few components and don't require complicated circuits, mechanisms, or programming. Bots like the Bristlebot or an Art Bot (which uses pens for legs), can be easy but engaging entry-level projects, ones that parents can assist with or that older kids can undertake as a launching point for getting started with robotics.

Books on Bots

You can find many blueprints for robotics projects online, and if you work with a system like LEGO® Mindstorms®, there are numerous project books for design inspiration. Here are a few other robotics titles you might explore at your local library or on a bookstore shelf as you search for inspiration and projects that fit you and your student's level of interest and expertise.

Robotics: Discover the Science and Technology of the Future with 20 Projects contains projects accessible even for new robot builders!

Robot Building for Beginners covers more advanced robotics engineering concepts.

Robot is part of the DK Eyewitness line of reference books for students.

Robots is another conceptual introduction to robotics for students.

My Robots: The Robotic Genius of Lady Regina Bonquers III is the invented history and sketchbook of a female robotics engineer. This one isn't just for girls but definitely has girl-power potential!

Other titles to investigate:

• Robot Builder's Bonanza, 4th Edition
• Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots
• Making Things Move DIY Mechanisms for Inventors, Hobbyists, and Artists

Investing in a robotics platform like LEGO® Mindstorms® or VEX is another pathway parents might consider. With a platform, kids can use build dozens of robots using designs available online or in the many, many books full of step-by-step bot ideas. The kits themselves may require substantial initial investment, but these kits have high reuse value, can be extended with add-on components, and offer programmability as well.

Empowering Student Robotics Engineers

At Science Buddies, students interested in robotics, of any flavor, or students who already have experience with or access to a system like LEGO® Mindstorms®, can find robotics engineering challenges that can be used for home fun or as the basis for a more involved science or engineering project for school.

The following Robotics Project Ideas offer a sample of the kinds of explorations students can find in the Robotics Area at Science Buddies:

• "The Frightened Grasshopper: Explore Electronics & Solar Energy with a Solar-Powered Robot Bug": this entry-level robotics exploration uses a toy kit to guide students in an investigation of solar power.
• "Grasping with Straws: Make a Robot Hand Using Drinking Straws": challenges students to design and build an articulated robotic hand prototype from everyday materials.
• "Climb Every Mountain with Your Own LEGO® Cable Car *": using the given challenge, students design their own LEGO® Mindstorms® solution for a robot that can move along a suspended cable.
• "Robot Picasso: Building a Robot That Creates Art": use the VEX® system to design a robot that can draw a picture.
• "Stair Master: Build an All-Terrain Robot": students explore different kinds of "wheel" solutions as they build an all-terrain robot capable of moving over various surfaces and even climbing stairs.
• "Motorized Michelangelo: Building an Art Robot with Servo Motors *": incorporate a servo motor and Robot C programming to allow the bot's pen or brush to be both lowered to the paper and lifted back off.
• "Drawing Dalibot: Designing an Art Robot That Switches Colors *": extend the programming and design of an art bot to allow the use of multiple colors.

Why Robotics

With its combination of innovation, creative thinking, engineering, and electronics, robotics can be a wonderful way to help encourage your student's engineering design skills, as well as important troubleshooting and problem solving strategies. If something doesn't work, figuring out why and then evaluating what you can do about it are core concepts when working with bots of all sizes. Equally important is the reality that there are no right answers in terms of "how" to build or design a robot.

Finio says he likes robotics for students and for STEM education because it is interdisciplinary. "Robotics is a combination of math, physics, mechanical and electrical engineering, computer science, programming, and sometimes even chemistry and biology," says Finio. "So whether you like using your hands to build things or prefer working on a computer, you can probably find something within robotics that you think is fun. Designing robots really encourages tinkering, prototyping, and trial-and-error. Even professional engineers rarely design robots that work perfectly on the first try!"

Pictured above: participants making light-following Bristlebots at a hands-on robotics event with Ben Finio, Science Buddies.

For more information about National Robotics Week, visit www.nationalroboticsweek.org.

SXSW Interactive Festival attendees got a chance to see a full-scale model of the giant James Webb Space telescope last month in Texas.

Visitors to the Webb Telescope exhibit at South by Southwest engaged in presentations by prominent astronomers including Nobel laureate John C. Mather. Photo: Courtesy, Northrop Grumman.

The image above, with the crowd gathered around, looks like something straight from a science fiction movie or novel. With its futuristic design, sophisticated sunshield system, and honeycomb of multiple mirrors, the Webb Telescope may, in fact, seem like the "stuff" of science fiction. Once launched, the space telescope will let astronomers study the formation of galaxies, planets beyond our Solar System, and newborn stars by examining their thermal radiation.

According to Northrop Grumman, more than 10,000 SXSW visitors got to see the four-story model Webb Telescope, explore the kinds of questions the telescope might help answer, and engage in related hands-on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) activities as part of the exhibit.

The model James Webb Space Telescope will be housed in Texas at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, a facility Northrop Grumman characterizes as "home to the only vacuum chamber in the world that is large and cold enough (-440°F) to provide a space-like environment for the Webb Telescope." With plans to launch the Webb Telescope in 2018, vacuum chamber testing is scheduled to begin in 2014 in historical Chamber A, a facility once used to test Apollo spacecraft.

Northrop Grumman's four-story high, tennis court-sized full-scale model of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope attracted thousands at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, March 8-10. Photo: Courtesy, Northrop Grumman

Supporting K-12 STEM Education

As an extension of the SXSW exhibition, Northrop Grumman and partners, including NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and the University of Texas, went into classrooms throughout Austin, TX and engaged K-12 students in STEM science and art projects related to the Webb Telescope. Projects and artwork created during these school activities were displayed at the SXSW event in support of hands-on learning.

"In this spirit of STEM outreach, the Webb Telescope's presence at SXSW culminated with a Guinness World Record attempt for the largest astronomy lesson," notes Northrop Grumman. "The previous record was 458, but the crowds in Austin helped set a new world record of 526."

Simulating Cutting-edge Science and Engineering

Visitors to the exhibit got to see demonstrations of next-generation hardware and mirror displays and the infrared camera being used in the Webb Telescope. The photo above spotlights the unique sunshield, a series of multiple membranes that have been designed to enable the Webb Telescope to function in extreme space temperatures.

Students can explore the challenges and engineering questions that have gone into the construction and design of the Webb Telescope in the "The James Webb Space Telescope's Amazing Multiple Mirrors and Sunshield" physics Project Idea.

Finding the fun in April Fools' Day gags and pranks—and the science connections to capitalize on the fun!

Photo: Screenshot from Google Nose video.

It is April 1, and April 1 means April Fools' Day jokes and pranks from trickster friends and even companies. YouTube is coming to an end (and all the videos being deleted)? Did you hear about Google Nose Beta ("the new scentsation in search")? Twitter is apparently doing away with vowels, unless you pay for them. Maybe you spotted MAKE's headline about creating oranges from a 3D printer? Clever! (See the full write-up for some other smart April Fools'-inspired fictitious headlines.) Even the WeAreTeachers site got in on the April 1 fun with their write-up on the Standardized Multi-Systemic Technologically-Sound Fully-Differentiated Standard Central Academic School Standards, better known as the SMSTSFDSCASS. And the Elmer's Teachers Club shared a link to this video of a science teacher pranking his fifth grade class with a gravity hoax.

Hands-on April 1 Science History

April 1 also coincides with the birth date of Richard Zsigmondy, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist for research on colloids. If you have a preschooler—or ever were one—maybe you remember mixing up and messing with Oobleck? It's a classic example of a colloid, along with ketchup and quicksand, neither of which you probably want to squish around in your hands!

Tactile Oobleck, with its non-Newtonian fluid properties, seems right on track for an impromptu April Fools' Day hands-on science experiment either at school or at home. The ingredients for Oobleck are ones you probably already have in your kitchen cabinets. If you want to turn your Oobleck play into a more comparative science activity, you'll find directions for mixing up two additional solutions in the "Making Mixtures: How Do Colloids Size Up?" science Project Idea.

Fun Science Connections

Did you know Oobleck, the colloidal substance, gets its name from a Dr. Seuss title? Maybe you missed that one somewhere along the way? If so, you will want to check out Bartholomew and the Oobleck.

Suggestions for Playful April 1 Science

A few other suggestions for April Fools' Day science and conversations to capitalize on the prankster energy in the air:

• "Warped Words and the Stroop Effect": testing the Stroop effect is good for some mind-bending fun and laughs with kids.
• "Visual Illusions: When What You See Is... Not What's There?": share an award-winning visual illusion and talk about what the eyes see—or what the brain thinks it sees.
• "Now You See It, Now You Don't: A Chromatic Adaptation Project": investigate how chromatic adaptation can trick the brain's perception of an image.
• "Rubber Bands for Energy": if you have a pops-from-the-can gag on hand, this experiment offers great hands-on exploration (after the laughing stops).
• "That's a Real Smile! ...or is it?": curious about whether or not that smile is sincere after you've pranked your friend/sibling/family member? How good are you at telling the difference between genuine and fake smiles?

Before settling down to serious Easter egg-dyeing with her family, this cool science mom did the "How Does a Chick Breathe Inside Its Shell?" activity with her daughter (age 9) and her nephew (age 3). Eggs and three-year-olds can sometimes lead to a scrambled science experience, but with a few extra eggs on hand, the experiment was a success!

"Believe me, a three-year-old will introduce some experimental variation into the procedure," admits the mom. "It is tough to do before and after weights if a small boy has removed some of the shell!"

To put their family science experience into perspective, one egg out of five survived, but even that one gave both kids a chance to explore the science—and math—at hand. They weighed the eggs before and after boiling on a kitchen scale and recorded their data, which is great practice for keeping a science project lab notebook!

"In the end, my daughter disproved her hypothesis," says the science mom. But a hypothesis that doesn't hold up doesn't mean the experiment failed, it means something was learned—and they got to talk about why they observed what they did and puzzle through what the experiment demonstrated. Keeping in mind that firsthand exploration and learning is the goal of a family science activity and much more important than being right or having all the answers ahead of time is all part of doing science at home with kids. This mom did a great job!

In addition to the allure of the eggs themselves, using the magnifying glass to examine the pores in an egg shell was fun for both kids, says the mom. Not surprisingly, the younger student found his own side-exploration with the magnifying glass, too. "He used the magnifying glass to closely observe the large hole he made in a peeled egg he was eating!"

What a wonderful science activity with the kids to tie in with other eggy activities last week. Way to go!

When it comes to structural engineering, there is a lot to be learned from the shape of the mighty egg. At the same time, sitting on an egg doesn't always work out so well. From eggs to domes to bridges, there is family science at hand perfect for spring break exploration for young builders and engineers! Be prepared to be slimed by some breakages and dazzled by some shows of surprising strength!

Egg and Engineering: Over-easy Science

Eggs break easily when force is applied from a certain direction, but held or positioned differently, an egg can withstand a surprising amount of pressure! Put eggs—and structural engineering and design—to the test with your kids in fun hands-on engineering activities that will challenge them to think creatively, to innovative, and to experiment!

Unfortunately, in addition to being warm and smooth, eggs are also fragile. Elementary school students know this. Most of them have had plenty of experience cracking eggs in school and home kitchen science and baking projects. But despite what they "know"—that eggs crack—sometimes maybe there is an irrepressible need to goof around with an egg. Maybe that need is especially strong when you've just gathered it, warm and smooth. But when you joke around and pretend to sit on the egg as the chicken must have, chances are good you will end up with a pile of gelatinous goo, even if you are not really trying to sit with all of your weight, even if, really, you are just being silly.

That is what happened to us, and egghead excitement quickly turned to nine-year-old despair. A broken egg isn't nearly as much fun, and the chickens didn't care that his egg had cracked. The chicken was done for the day. There wasn't another egg ready and waiting to be found. These are sometimes hard lessons that go along with chicken care, egg gathering, and any kind of hands-on science.

Unexpected Connections

The incident with the egg was a reminder to us that eggs are fragile. We crack them to break them open when we want to cook or eat them. While looking at science project ideas in preparation for this week's focus on Easter and family and class egg boiling and dyeing activities, I ran across the "Fallen Arches: The Surprising Strength of Eggshells" materials science Project Idea.

As the title suggests, the project is all about the strength of the egg shape or, more specifically, of half an egg—an arch. This is a fun hands-on engineering experiment for even the youngest of student scientists. With three half eggs, sitting point-side up and arranged in an evenly-distributed triangle, how much weight will they hold before caving? You and your young scientists might be surprised!

If you keep a few eggs aside when you boil others for dyeing, you can engage your students with a great hands-on science activity that easily feeds into other questions and experiments about structures and building designs. As you and your students talk about arches as a structural element, you may find that there are examples in your neighborhood that can add even more relevance to your exploration and your student's understanding of arches in the real world. A small stone bridge walkway that crosses a favorite duck pond of ours is built using arch shapes. An arch bridge is a classic bridge design, in fact. (To extend your discussion, look up keystones!)

From Eggs to Engineering

The following hands-on engineering projects can easily be turned into fun family science activities, great for spring break, summer vacation, or a rainy day. Many of these projects involve some combination of physics, structural engineering, materials science, and math, which gives them great range and versatility. A lot depends on what questions you and your kids want to ask and explore. Why, after all, are the half eggshells arranged in a triangle in the "Fallen Arches" project?

That you can spend an afternoon assembling straws or rolls of newspaper and wind up with an awesome three-dimensional object worthy of display gives these projects added pizzazz for families that love DIY projects and the art that evolves from hands-on exploration. On the flip side, there are structural engineering projects where the goal is to build them so that you can break them. For some kids and families, that is exactly the ticket for thrilling science!

Check the following Project Ideas for more suggestions for families that love to build:

• "Dome Sweet Dome": build a geodesic dome using struts made from rolled-up newspaper. (You can do a similar activity with straws.)
• "Building the Tallest Tower": great for the younger crowd as long as no one gets upset when the tower tumbles!
• "The Effect of Bridge Design on Weight Bearing Capacity": test two different bridge designs, a Warren truss bridge from Popsicle sticks and a Howe truss bridge made from straws. This is a build and break project, so be prepared!
• "Can a Toilet Paper Tube Support Your Weight? *": how big would a tube need to be for you to stand on it without it caving in? How does the answer change if you fill the tube with various materials?
• "Newspaper Tower *": how tall of a tower can you build with two sheets of paper—and nothing else? What shape will it take to reach the greatest height and to maximize the paper and to make it stand?
• "Paper Bridge for Pennies *": a bridge made out of one sheet of paper, a few paper clips, and the challenge to have it support 100 pennies? Let your engineers loose and see what creative solutions they devise!

Cracking Family Science

In the end, eggs do break easily when force is applied from a certain direction. But held or positioned differently, an egg can withstand more pressure than you might expect. Put eggs—and other building designs—to the test with your kids, and let us know what you discover and what fun you have doing science together!

Egg science is fun at any time, but if you and your kids are planning to boil and dye eggs this week, don't miss out on the great opportunities for fun, colorful, and possibly smelly, family science!

Above: the results of our first attempt at using natural dyes for our eggs.

In the years that I have worked at Science Buddies, the tradition of dyeing Easter eggs has taken on new meaning and significance. Instead of simply being a requisite family craft activity, Easter egg preparations have become a conduit for a spring-themed boost of hands-on science with the kids. Really, in my house, the plastic eggs are where it's at. The plastic eggs are the ones that are hidden, found, and might be filled with something of sweet value. The real eggs are the ones decorated and then ushered to the climate-controlled sanctity of the fridge.

Our real eggs are pro forma, but we still dye a dozen or so each Easter just because, so we might as well make use of the opportunity to investigate what's going on with those shells, both inside and out.

Egg Science in Years Past

Our exploration of Easter eggs in the last few years has focused both on the boiling process and on the dyeing process, and we have learned a lot through trial and error and through comparing different approaches to each step. Particularly notable was the realization that hard boiled eggs really are not supposed to be grossly green on the inside! (I've been boiling eggs the way my grandmother taught me all my life!) But our heightened attention to the science at hand also led to interesting questions about pH levels and types of vinegar, and last year, we made our first attempt at using natural dyes.

That process, in and of itself, was beautiful and much more exciting than using the little plastic egg-shaped containers and grocery store dyeing tablets. Our series of mason jars filled with a rainbow of natural dye baths was stunning. If the eggs had turned out as vibrant as the waters themselves, the process would have been a home run for both kids and mom. Unfortunately, the final egg shades didn't live up to the colors at which their water jars hinted, and some colors (and ingredients) were more successful than others. Even so, the hands-on activity was fun, inspired lots of predictions from the kids, and gave us plenty of room to talk about how we might modify the process and our ingredients to enhance our results another year. Plus, in addition to the smell of hard boiled eggs in the air, we added a layer of boiled cabbage!

Bunny Steps with Egg Science

To get you in an egg-ready mood, read through my accounts of our previous explorations. My bunny-hop trail through the land of egg boiling and dyeing is, by and large, a cautionary tale of family science, but our experience might help you hone in on an angle of scientific inquiry to guide your family's egg-based activities this year:

• "Hard-Boiled Science: "I thought that sickly green layer to the yolk was simply... a fact of a hard-boiled egg. It's not!"
• "Putting Your Eggs All in One (Dye) Basket": "Underwhelmed by the sticker and glitter-approach to decorating eggs lining the shelves, I thought of the subtle tones of eggs dyed with natural ingredients and decided we should try it."

There are plenty of "egg"-centric projects at Science Buddies that you can modify for a home-based science activity with your kids. Even without an extra dozen eggs on hand for testing, these science project ideas can fuel family dinner discussions in preparation for Easter:

• "Egg-cellently Cooked Eggs: The Process of Soft-Boiling an Egg": Use the time suggestions in the procedure to create your own informal egg boiling experiment.
• "How Does a Chick Breathe Inside Its Shell?": A chicken egg shell has thousands of pores. What do these pores do? Check out the diagram to learn more about the anatomy of an egg and then investigate by weighing eggs before and after boiling.
• "Eggs and Hen's Diet: Can You Get Bigger Eggs for Peanuts?": What do chickens eat? What makes one chicken feed more nutritious than another? What nutritional value do eggs offer us and what is the relationship between the egg and what the chicken eats? If you tend chickens at home or at your school, experiment with the relationship between the size of the eggs laid and the amount of protein in the chicken feed.

It's the Doing that Counts!

Any of these explorations can be easily adapted as a fun science activity for parents with kids in the house or even for classroom exploration. For families, if you will be dyeing eggs the weekend before Easter, plan ahead and make a bit of extra time to experiment with your family's boiling or dyeing process and to talk about why your results will differ if you change one of your variables. Get a scratch notebook out and assign one of your young scientists the task of recording your experiment. Give another a camera to document the process! How many eggs are you starting with? What color are the eggs? How many eggs are you adding to the pot at once? When are you adding the eggs? How many minutes will you boil the water with the heat on? How long will the eggs sit in the water after you turn it off? Do you use a lid? How will you cool the eggs? And then, what will you do with the second batch? Remember, to compare your results and test a hypothesis, you want to change only one variable at a time!

Any of these questions can be turned into a science activity with your kids. You can come up with a list of questions related to the dyeing process, too! Pick one question that sounds fun, and turn your yearly Easter egg dyeing into a family science activity. You don't have to compare everything. Just pick something that you all agree sounds interesting and makes you "wonder." Talk about it: What do you already know about the dyeing process? What questions do you have?

Designer Dye Baths

If you are looking for something really different and looking to get as far from a "box" craft as you can, the solution may be tucked away in your closet (or found at a local thrift store). The new "Dye Eggs Using Silk Ties for Egg-cellent Colors" chemistry Project Idea explores the science behind a DIY dye approach popular in home and garden and craft magazines. You can create your own "tie"-dyed eggs worthy of Martha Stewart using silk ties. (This is not your rubber-band t-shirt tie dye!)

Following any ready-made directions for using silk ties to dye eggs, you can create an array of eggs sporting novel patterns and designs. But what's the key? What's the science behind the process? We've got a science procedure that lets students ask science questions and put the process to a scientific test! (For a family-friendly spin of the tie-dyed eggs experiment, see the version we posted at Scienctific American.)

Better understanding how the process works and what really makes the colors and patterns transfer best involves some hands-on testing. Be forewarned! To ensure you are only changing one variable in the testing, this science project starts with raw eggs, and only half of them will be boiled during the dyeing process. At the end, half of your eggs may be pretty, but they will still be raw! Be prepared to blow out the insides before you put them on display! And, remember, the silk tie dyes are not ones that are necessarily safe to eat. These are "for display only" eggs!

Successful Egg Science

Boiling and dyeing eggs is a wonderful chance for creative and scientific fun with your kids. How did you spruce up the science in your egg-dyeing this year? We would love to hear! Leave a comment below to tell us what you and your kids or students did.

When Mavericks' unusual sea floor terrain meets up with the perfect winter weather conditions rolling in from the Pacific Ocean, the surf's right for big waves. Students can learn more about the area's extreme surf with a range of hands-on science investigations.

Photo: Courtesy, Rick Hyman

The surf break, which gets its name from the dog that tagged along with a trio of surfers who first decided the break wasn't surfable, was surfed solo by Jeff Clark for more than a decade before other big wave surfers gave the break a try. Winter storms in the Pacific Ocean create big waves at Mavericks, swells that often crest well over 25 feet and create a surfing challenge unlike any other.

Today, Mavericks has developed the kind of notoriety often heaped upon X-game-type sporting events. Since the annual Mavericks surf contest began, there have been both deaths and injuries, and only the elite are invited to brave the waves in an epic showdown that pits surfers against the biggest surf the Northern California coast has to offer. The mystique surrounding Mavericks is steep. The dynamics of the rocky ocean floor can be punishing. The force of the swell cannot be underestimated. This is not your ordinary big wave surfing.

One online surf guide describes Mavericks as "a cold heavy water wave, breaking over a punishing rock bottom with shifting currents [and] visited by great white sharks." Even for Hawaii's legendary big wave surfers, Maverick's is a watery beast of its own.

Though yearly in concept, the date of the Mavericks event varies. These are diehard surfers, but for the surf to be right, the conditions have to be perfect, and the contest window is open for only a few months in the winter. Once meteorological reports and ocean projections pinpoint the timing, a select group of surfers are invited for a surf contest that may happen as quickly as 24-48 hours later. Despite the short notice, the competition draws upwards of fifty thousand spectators and is webcast live.

Ocean Sciences, Math, Physics, and More

You can learn more about big waves in the KQED QUEST video (above). Or, catch big waves on the big screen with movies like Chasing Mavericks (2012, PG) or Riding Giants (2004, PG-13).

When you make a map of the mountains and valleys, for example, of an area, you are mapping the topography of the land or the surface contours of the Earth. Bathymetry is a similar study of the depth of the ocean floor. Using bathymetry, contour maps are created that show the terrain of the ocean bottom. In the case of Mavericks, bathymetry studies reveal an unusual underwater ramp bordered by deep troughs on each side. The specifics of the ocean bottom in this area create a scenario of angles, speeds, and bending waves that result in the large, powerful, and unique Mavericks wave. For oceanographers, these waves are a fascinating example of the ways in which the ocean bottom, the weather up top, and laws of physics and math all come to play in wave formation.

Student Making Science Connections

Students interested in Mavericks, ocean sciences, or even extreme surfing, can learn more about related topics in the following science Project Ideas:

• Roaming Robots: Build Your Own Underwater Robot: Underwater data is gathered from a range of sources and techniques, but students curious about Mavericks can learn more about underwater robots that may be used to gather data about the ocean floor. The "Roaming Robots: Build Your Own Underwater Robot" Project Idea guides students in building and testing a simple DIY bot using familiar household or basement materials.
• The Science Behind Tsunamis: Study the Effect of Water Depth on Wave Velocity: What do Mavericks and Tsunamis have in common? Big waves, of course! But both also share velocity. The slope of the sea floor in the area of Mavericks is related to the way the energy of the waves are channeled to the shore. In this science project, students explore the relationship between ocean depth and wave speed.
• Ocean Currents: Modeling the 'Global Conveyor Belt' in Your Kitchen: Bathymetry has a lot to do with why Mavericks big waves are possible, but the "perfect" conditions event organizers watch for each year depend on certain weather conditions, the convergence of meteorological happenings that begin far from shore. In this science project, students explore the relationship between the channels of differing temperatures in the ocean and the velocity of ocean currents.
• Catch the Wave!: In this energy and power project, students use online ocean buoy data to determine possible coastal locations that could be used to harness wave energy as an alternative energy power system. What could a day of Mavericks-sized waves power (besides surfer enthusiasm)?

You may not ever "catch" a Mavericks wave. But with a bit of hands-on science, you can better understand what's going on both under the water and at the top as the waves roll in!

Adding graphs to your science project display board helps others see how your project went. Knowing when to use a histogram, and how it differs from other kinds of charts, might just give you a statistical edge!

The above image shows a sample histogram. It looks a lot like a bar chart, but it represents how data is distributed within certain ranges or "bins." Note: many sources say that in a histogram, there are no spaces between bars, but some online graph tools, like the one we used for this sample, automatically add space for both histograms and regular bar charts.

If you said you thought that "y" would increase when you changed "x," the data you logged in your science laboratory notebook during your experiment should show values for y at each different x that you tested. Your data might make sense to you immediately, but to present your data so that others can see and make sense of your results, you may need a chart. But what kind? Bar chart? Pie chart? Line graph? What about a histogram? The kind of chart you need has a lot to do with what kind of data you collected. If your data involves "ranges" of numbers, a histogram might be in order.

A Histo-huh?

A histogram looks similar to a bar chart, but there is an important difference between the two. A histogram shows how data falls into numerical ranges or bins. If you are testing paper airplanes, you might make a chart that shows how far, on average, each different style of plane flew. A bar chart works fine to represent this data. By looking at your graph, you will be able to see, at a glance, which style of plane averaged the most distance. This is the kind of data gathering and charting you might do as part of the "How Far Will It Fly? Build & Test Paper Planes with Different Drag" aerodynamics Project Idea.

But what if you wanted to test, instead, two specific plane designs? You (and maybe some friends) might fly planes of each design fifty or more times each and record the distance for each flight. While you might create a cumulative bar graph comparing the average results of the two designs, you might also chart your data for each plane, showing how many times x-style plane flew 0-5ft, 6-10ft, 11-15ft, 16-20ft, 21-25ft, and 26-30ft. Each of your data points, each distance you recorded, would fit into one of those numerical "buckets." By sorting your data into numerical ranges, you make a histogram.

Tracking Trajectory

The new "Bet You Can't Hit Me! The Science of Catapult Statistics" math Project Idea lets you get hands-on with histograms. In this math project, you'll use the cool Ping Pong Catapult kit to experiment with the launch settings needed to propel a ball a certain distance (or at a certain target). Which pull-back angle will yield the longest launch? Pick an angle, catapult a ping pong ball fifty or more times, measuring the distance each ball travels before hitting the ground, and then plot your data. Pick another pull-back angle, or change another variable, and see which setting works better. Using histograms, you can explore the statistics related to your data. What's the mean distance for a certain launch profile? What's the standard deviation of the data? What's the distribution?

The ping pong exploration is a fun way to experiment with the physics of the catapult and put practical statistics in action at the same time. (This is only one of several projects students can do with the Ping Pong Catapult science kit from the Science Buddies Store.)

A Sweet Math Extension

After getting some practice with ping pong balls, you can do a similar statistics project, and get more hands-on practice with histograms, by creating an independent variation based on the "M&M Math" Project Idea. A bar chart is fine if you just want to show how many candies of each color, on average, were in the bag of candies you opened at lunch. But what if you want to see how often each color shows up when you count the candies in a dozen different bags? Get to counting! When you are done, you can create a separate histogram for each of your candy colors and compare how the colors are distributed.

After that? Grab some friends and share!

The National STEM video game competition supports the potential of video game design as a tool for STEM education and rewards and encourages the learning process for emerging student video game developers. Science Buddies' video game design resources can help students get started on a path of game design and development that transforms a love of video game playing into an innovative process of game creation. What kind of video game will you build?

Click the image above to view video samples from winners of last year's National STEM Video Game Challenge.

The 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge is on! Video game designers in middle and high school are invited to create a STEM-centered video game that shows off their video game design skills through the creation of an engaging game. The game can be educational in theme. Your game might revolve around a science concept or require the use of math to succeed, but games for the STEM Video Game Challenge to do not have to be educational. Building the game, in and of itself, is educational and is one way of putting science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) into action and into real-world scenarios.

Players can create entries using their choice of a range of game design applications, including popular free tools and sites like Gamestar Mechanic, Scratch, GameMaker, and Kodu. Each of those tools is a separate entry category, and prizes are awarded for middle and high school winners in each category. Students who are game building using other tools or program languages submit their games in the "Open Platform" category.

The deadline for entries is April 24, 2013, which means you still have plenty of time to whip up your own awesome video game project and show your stuff. Whether it is your very first attempt at video game creation or the next in an impressive string of epic games you've been tweaking, playtesting, and sharing with your friends, take a step toward the public light and put your game out there! There are great prizes up for grabs along with plenty of gamer bragging rights for the winning student video game developers.

Getting Started

If you are interested in the STEM Video Game Challenge but are not sure how to get started with your first game, the following resources and Project Ideas at Science Buddies walk you through some basics, open your eyes to what is possible, and may help get you started on an exciting path of video game and computer innovation! Many aspiring game designers first make the leap from playing to creating by solving crossover challenges at Gamestar Mechanic and then building their own Gamestar Mechanic games. Scratch can also be a great first step for students interested in video game design and/or computer programming. GameMaker offers a different environment and may be a next step in a game coder's evolution.

Working through game design tutorials and hands-on projects lets you dive in and get started! Above: a Scratch tutorial being explored and tweaked. As you customize a sample, you become more familiar with how blocks and commands are used.

• Want To Make a Video Game? Here's How!: make your first Scratch program.


• Power Play: How Does Animation Timing Affect Your Perception of Game Action?: experiment with the timing of game movements in Scratch.


• Quick Draw McPaws: Teach A Computer Kitty How to Draw Shapes: get a grip on how to draw shapes and work with "go to" and "pen down" blocks in Scratch.


• Making It Real: Incorporating Physics in Video Games: explore the role of physics in your game design using GameMaker.


• Go Fish! Creating an Ocean-Friendly Fishing Video Game: use GameMaker to create a game with an educational theme.


• Resource: Kid-Friendly Programming Languages: suggestions for languages/programming environments for K-12 students interested in making video games.


• Resource: Scratch User Guide: coverage of Scratch basics, installation, and troubleshooting.


• Resource: GameMaker User Guide: links to tutorials, examples, and other resources for GameMaker.


• Resource: Tips and Resources for Making Video and Computer Games: helpful information and links to resources that help define what makes a "good" video game.

If you enter the National STEM Video Challenge, we want to know! Please leave a comment or email blog@sciencebuddies.org to tell us about your game. We would love to feature your work here at Science Buddies, too!

The above photos were taken during the creation of the "Particles in the Mist: See Radioactive Particles Decay with Your Own Cloud Chamber!" physics Project Idea. Radioactive decay particles are too small to reflect light and too small to see, but with a cloud chamber, you can confirm their presence and observe their movements by viewing the trail of ions they leave as they move throughout the chamber.

This science project guides students in the construction of a DIY cloud chamber made from household materials. To observe the process of radioactive decay in this project, you will need a safe radioactive source. You can buy a ²¹⁰Pb needle or you can dismantle an ionizing smoke detector to get at the radioactive source inside. If you like to take things apart, grab your tools! (Note: This one will not go back together in the end!)

A biotechnology kit from Bio-Rad Laboratories introduces young scientists to the world of biochemistry. In this fun science activity, kids can extract their own DNA, examine it without a microscope, and create a pendant containing their DNA—the ultimate item for cool-but-geeky show and tell!
By Kim Mullin

With a fun science kit from Bio-Rad Laboratories, you and your students can extract DNA—and then preserve it in a cool necklace. This is hands-on science that is sure to be a hit at the next show and tell!

You may know that DNA is found in almost every cell of your body, but did you know that it is possible to see your DNA without a microscope? You don't need to be in a fancy scientific lab to become a DNA detective! Exploring the fascinating world of DNA is simple and quick with Science Buddies' "Discovering DNA: Do Your Cheek Cells & a Strawberry Both Have DNA?" Project Idea and the Genes in a Bottle^TM kit from Bio-Rad Laboratories!

What is DNA?

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the blueprint for everything that happens inside the cell of an organism, and each cell in an organism has a copy of the same set of instructions. The entire set of instructions that make you you is called your genome.

Scientists study DNA for many reasons. They can figure out how the instructions stored in DNA help your body to function properly. They can use DNA to decide what new medicines are needed to treat a disease. They can figure out the suspect of a crime. They can even use ancient DNA to reconstruct evolutionary histories!

See Your Own DNA!

How do scientists get DNA from a cell so that they can study it? They use a process called a DNA extraction. Although this may sound like something best left to professionals, DNA extraction is simple enough that you can try it out at home! Following the simple steps outlined in the Discovering DNA: Do Your Cheek Cells & a Strawberry Both Have DNA? Project Idea, you can extract DNA from your own cheek and take a look.

The Genes in a Bottle kit contains everything you need for this science activity. The kit also comes with a pendant and instructions for coloring your precipitated DNA. After you are finished with the extraction, you can make a unique helix keepsake filled with strands of your own DNA to show off to your friends and family—proof positive that even kids can be biochemists!

Where Else Can You Find DNA?

Once you see your own DNA, you may wonder about DNA and other living things. If your cells have DNA that provides the instructions for creating your eye and hair color, then what about the eye and fur color of other animals? Or the shapes and colors of leaves and plants? With a bit of human cheek DNA extraction experience hanging around your neck, you can move on to extracting DNA from a strawberry to see if plants also have DNA. Will the DNA appear the same?

Once you've analyzed the DNA from a strawberry, why stop? Check for DNA in other fruits, vegetables, and grains. An onion can be an eye-opening next step! Can you extract more DNA from some items than from others? With your new DNA detective skills, you can find out!

The above photo series is from a recent 5th grade student's Crystal Radio science project. The student used the Science Buddies Kit for his science experiment but modified the experimental design of the crystal set during construction. After building the set, the student put the radio to the test, testing one of the many variables available for exploration with a crystal radio. The result? The student was one of the top five participants at his middle school science fair. Congratulations!

Curious about crystal radio? Learn more in this profile of an engineer who has built hundreds of crystal sets!

Do you use a package's nutritional information when making food choices? Can you trust the accuracy of the information? Nutritional content requirements are becoming more widespread, but the information on a label or a restaurant brochure may or may not be correct. Students can learn more about nutrition and explore the kinds of science involved in analyzing a food's nutritional composition by holding favorite foods to the fire, literally! Which foods offer the most chemical energy for the body?

Image: screenshot from "Calorie Detective," by Casey Neistat, New York Times

A short documentary film titled "Calorie Detective" recently debuted on the New York Times "Opinion" page. The film, which runs just over five minutes, combines a catchy sound score, DIY-inspired presentation of data, and nitty-gritty science. The result is an engaging video that lets viewers tag along as the filmmaker takes an informal look at the nutritional content information provided for both packaged and made-to-order foods.

Food package labeling is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and new policies may require the availability of nutritional information at chain restaurants. While restaurants and food manufacturers are required to make caloric and nutritional data available, the information is not necessarily checked, validated, or monitored. Does the cinnamon raisin bagel you had for breakfast really have 210 Calories?

Student Science

Students interested in food science and kitchen chemistry can get hands-on with the "Burning Calories" analysis of the chemical energy offered by various foods. A science kit is available in the Science Buddies Store.

Student food scientists can also investigate a food's supplemental iron content using the "Mag-nificent Breakfast Cereal" biotechnology Project Idea.

In the "Calorie Detective" video, filmmaker Casey Neistat puts an assortment of his favorite daily food purchases, including a breakfast muffin, a Starbucks Frappuccino, and a packaged tofu sandwich from the grocery, to a "nutritional content accuracy" test. With the help of scientists at the New York Obesity Nutrition Research Center, Casey compared the stated caloric content of five foods with the actual Calories contained in each. According to the video, the food testing to determine the actual number of Calories in each food took ten hours, precision lab equipment, the help of two food scientists, and a lot of math.

While the tests for "Calorie Detective" were conducted by scientists, the testing for the film is largely informal. They didn't run multiple trials for each of the foods, a step that would give a look at the average number of Calories for each food to compare to the stated nutritional value data. The results are not statistically conclusive. However, as the "Calorie Detective" film shows, what you see on the billboard when you order, on a package label at the store, or on a glossy nutritional card by the cash register, may or may not tell the whole story. Things get particularly tricky when items are made by hand, as you order. Maybe you end up with a double scoop, a bigger handful, or an extra squirt. There goes the accuracy of the average nutritional content data for the item!

Making Connections

Students curious about how scientists, like the ones shown in the video, test and determine nutritional information can take hands-on steps in food science with an exploration of another aspect of nutritional value—how much energy a food offers the body. When your body breaks down and digests a food, not all Calories offer the same value to the body. You may guess that the potential "energy" stored in food has something to do with the amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates in the food. But what is the relationship? What kinds of foods offer the most chemical energy or the best bang for the number of Calories?

In the "Burning Calories: How Much Energy is Stored in Different Types of Food?" food science Project Idea, students can conduct their own food testing and get answers by setting food on fire, using a homemade calorimeter, and simulating the oxidation of food to measure the energy that cells can use or store from different foods. A convenient Science Buddies kit is available for this science project!

Hands-on winter science may be full of snow and ice, but that doesn't mean it can't be colorful! Take a cue from this inspiring story about an engineering student who gave a colorful twist to a backyard igloo. Students can explore physics, civil engineering, and more in related science projects at home or in the backyard on a snow day!

Rainbow igloo project caught the attention of makers and engineers of all ages—and opens up plenty of angles for hands-on student exploration! View full image set.

This may sound a bit like an activity parents might suggest for restless children on a snow day: go build a snow fort! As the story goes, the heart of the igloo challenge was similarly conceived. Brigid Burton (the mother) wanted to have a project to keep Daniel occupied during an extended holiday visit so that he wasn't bored and so that she would have plenty of time with her daughter while Daniel was busy. In preparation, Brigid spent months filling empty milk cartons with colored water and putting them aside to freeze. When Daniel arrived, Daniel learned that he had "work" to do during the holidays, especially if he wanted Brigid's approval of a future engagement between Daniel and her daughter.

Daniel's igloo took approximately 500 colorful frozen ice blocks, a large chunk of time, and lots and lots of snow mixed with water ("snowcrete") to hold the cartons together. In the end, Daniel completed the challenge and secured his future mother-in-law's approval, but Daniel's story—and the whimsy of a rainbow igloo—also caught the attention of engineers and makers everywhere. If the conditions are right... why not try your hand at an igloo!

Making Connections

Building an igloo, in and of itself, is a great conceptual and hands-on project for students. But Daniel's igloo also raises a number of other angles for student inquiry. Here are some suggestions for students interested in exploring a hands-on science project as an outgrowth of the inspiring rainbow igloo story:

• "Dome Sweet Dome": The dome shape of a traditional igloo offers interesting issues for students exploring structural design. Once built, the structure is sound without any internal support beams and strong enough, if done correctly, to support a surprising amount of weight at the centermost external point. In the "Dome Sweet Dome" civil engineering science Project Idea, students construct a geodesic dome from tubes of rolled up newspaper.

• "Investigating the 'Mpemba Effect': Can Hot Water Freeze Faster than Cold Water?": Daniel's girlfriend's mother spent months preparing ice bricks for the igloo. If you needed to freeze ice bricks on the spot, however, to supplement a quantity you have ready or to generate a number of bricks in a short amount of time, are you better off using hot water or cold water? Explore the Mpemba effect and put it to the test! Making a few dozen bricks for a small igloo project, ice chest, or snowball barricade in the back yard is a perfect excuse to see whether hot or cold water freezes fastest! (A Science Buddies kit is available for this exploration!)
• "Mixing Light to Make Colors": You know that even if you only have a few colors of paint on hand, you can mix a range of secondary and tertiary colors. Does light mix the same way? The translucent colored ice blocks in the rainbow igloo might create interesting colors on the inside, a changing interior as the angle of sunlight on the surface changes throughout the day. In the "Mixing Light to Make Colors" science Project Idea, students use colored films (or hand-colored transparencies) to explore how light shining through different colors mixes to create the color our eyes perceive. Anyone interested in theater knows that different "gels" are often key to getting the right lighting effect! Budding photographers, too, can turn this science exploration into an eye-opening experiment.
• "How Does Color Affect Heating by Absorption of Light?": A typical igloo, made of snow, is opaque, and igloos are known for their ability to offer insulation and warmth even in extremely cold temperatures. The ice bricks in Daniel's igloo are filled with water tinted with food coloring. As a result, these blocks are more translucent than a traditional igloo's snow blocks. Will the rainbow igloo melt more quickly? Will the temperature inside the rainbow igloo be similar to a snow igloo? While the colors used in the ice bricks for the rainbow igloo offer more whimsy than engineering purpose, when it comes to painting a house, color can be an important factor. In the "How Does Color Affect Heating by Absorption of Light?" science Project Idea, students explore the relationship between color and heat absorption using small jars of water covered with various colors of paper. When it comes to creating the warmest space, is there an optimum color for house or windows paints, coverings, or materials?

Additional Reading

To read more about Daniel's igloo, view the local news coverage, or see photos taken during construction, visit the following sources:

• "Rainbow Igloo Rocks"
• "New Zealander spends his holidays in Edmonton, building an igloo"
• Image gallery

• How to Build an Igloo: And Other Snow Shelters
• Building an Igloo

Archaeologists and scientists have announced that the remains found last summer beneath a Leicester parking lot are those of Richard III, a much-maligned figure from English history. The story offers an enticing mix of history, literature, and science. Curious students, classes, and parents can learn more about genetics and genomics procedures used to solve the puzzle of the skeleton's identity.

Human remains found in trench one of the Grey Friars dig. Photo: Courtesy of the University of Leicester.

Richard III was killed in 1485 during the Battle of Bosworth, the final conflict in the War of Roses, a series of battles between the houses of Lancaster and York for the throne of England. With Richard's death, Henry VII ascended to the throne and began rule by the Tudors, a ruling dynasty that continued for more than one hundred years. Historical account of what happened to Richard III after his death is vague. Some maintained his remains had been buried near a local church, but as the years passed, the original location of the Greyfriars Friary was lost.
The lack of concrete knowledge regarding the fallen king's burial fed an aura of mystery regarding Richard's remains, a mystery that has intrigued historians for years and a puzzle that a team of scientists and archaeologists from the University of Leicester undertook to solve.

Digging into History

Last August, the remains of a body were found in Leicester, England by a team led by archaeologist Richard Buckley. Having determined the location, they thought, of the original Greyfriars Friary, a parking lot now, Buckley and team began to dig. They turned up "a human skeleton, complete with evidence of battle wounds—a blow to the head, and an arrow in the back—and scoliosis, or curvature of the spine."

Radiocarbon dating of the skeleton confirmed that the individual died in the second half of the 15th or in the early 16th century, which fits with Richard's death in 1485. The age of the individual at the time of death was posited as late 20s or early 30s. Richard died at 32. These results offered early indication that the remains might be the ones for which the team had been searching and fueled the quest for irrefutable identification. Characteristics of the skeleton, including the scoliosis and evidence of a fatal blow to the head further appeared to corroborate the story. But many people died in the late 1400s. Determining, without a doubt, the identity of the skeleton required more comprehensive and sophisticated research and science.

Richard III: History and Literature

The Thrill of Science

For young scientists, the story of Richard's exhumation and discovery is one that combines the best of history, adventure, mystery, and science. In a fitting twist, this week's science news tells a tale worthy of the stage. But in the end, science held the key to the identification of the skeleton. As detailed on the University of Leicester's The Search for Richard III site devoted to the excavation and identification, the many stages of scientific research and analysis included DNA extraction, X-ray tomography, osteology, and carbon dating.

Students fascinated by the story can conduct their own genetics and genomics science explorations to learn more about the processes scientists used to solve the puzzle of the skeleton's identity. The following Project Ideas guide students in hands-on research working with BLAST and building evolutionary trees using mitochondrial sequences:

• "Neanderthals, Orangutans, Lemurs, & You--It's a Primate Family Reunion!"
• "Trace Your Ancient Ancestry Through DNA"
• "What is the Woolly Mammoth's Closest Living Relative?
• "Use DNA Sequencing to Trace the Blue Whale's Evolutionary Tree"

Stay tuned! A new Project Idea is coming to Science Buddies that will give students a chance to simulate radiocarbon dating.

Further Reading

• University of Leicester announces discovery of King Richard III
• The Search for Richard III
• Discovery of Remains of England's King Richard III Confirmed
• Skeletal sleuthing team uncovered royal remains and the story behind them
• Body found under parking lot is King Richard III, scientists prove

• Bones Under Parking Lot Belonged to Richard III
  

Ask an engineer if she has ever built a crystal radio, and chances are you will get a story—one with all the makings of a classic when it comes to garage engineering and adolescence. Students often build a crystal radio as a first step in engineering and electronics—or as a middle school science fair project. If they have questions or need assistance troubleshooting their "set," they may be lucky enough to get assistance from Rick Marz, a seasoned engineer with an enduring affinity for crystal sets and a commitment to passing his expertise on to students.

The Golden Age of Radio

The diagram above is from a 1920s publication distributed to teach the general public how to make their own simple and inexpensive radio. Using wire and a common cardboard container, students can create a similar crystal set as a science project. For aspiring student engineers, a crystal radio exploration is a great hands-on project and may be a stepping stone into other electronics and engineering investigations. A convenient Science Buddies kit is available for this science project!

Building Your First Crystal Set is Just the Beginning

Once your crystal radio is built, put it to the test! There are many variables you can manipulate to gain a better understanding of how the receiver works and how sound waves from the AM spectrum are picked up by your set. Students looking to extend a crystal radio exploration might consider adding a capacitator. What advantages will this bring?

Sending and Receiving

Students interested in radio may also enjoy building and testing their own AM radio transmitter based on the "Make Your Own Low-Power AM Radio Transmitter" Project Idea. (A Science Buddies kit is available!)

Have you built a crystal radio or the low-power AM transmitter? Share your photos with the Science Buddies community!

Building a crystal radio set is a project that taps a young engineer's DIY love of hands-on wiring and offers a functional product in the end—a classic win-win. Granted, you won't toss your stereo or MP3 player out the window in favor of a crystal radio. But, if constructed properly, you can tune in to local AM radio stations as a result of learning more about modulation, radio waves, alternating (AC) and direct (DC) currents, diodes, and semiconductors.

A Hallmark of Engineering Exploration

Many engineers have a soft spot for crystal radio science projects. Whether they recall wiring their own crystal radio set and seeing their first semiconductor in action, or, like Rick Marz, grew up in a time when radio was a primary source of entertainment and hands-on engineering, crystal radios may be a rite of passage in the field of electronics.

Retired after forty-five years in the semiconductor business, Rick is a long-time volunteer at Science Buddies and part of the team of volunteer Experts who help assist students and parents in the Ask an Expert (AAE) forums. As an Expert at AAE, Rick has helped hundreds of students with questions about their electronics and engineering projects, including popular projects like the "Electrolyte Challenge," "Spin Right 'Round with this Simple Electric Motor," "Shaking Up Some Energy," "Is This Connected to That?" and "Build Your Own Crystal Radio."

Rick enjoys helping students with a wide range of electronics and engineering questions in the forums, but he has a particular fondness for crystal radio investigations and a history with crystal radio that goes back more than fifty years. By his own estimate, Rick says he is one of the last of a small group of crystal radio experts.

Witness to an Epoch

Having spent forty-five years in the semiconductor business, Rick has been a part of the industry from its beginnings in the 1960s. "At a recent semiconductor alumni dinner," says Rick, "we calculated that we had witnessed 99.8% of the growth of the entire semiconductor, computer and communication industry during our career." As it turns out, his interest began well before there even was an industry.

"Maybe I exaggerated a bit when I claimed to be the 'last of a small group' of crystal set experts, but I don't think I'm too far off," says Rick. "I grew up before television existed, and the radio in every home was the sole source of connected entertainment and the source of much of the outside information we received." For today's students, imagining the world before smart phones, MP3 players, and always-connected devices is often difficult; imagining the realities of life before TV may be even more unfathomable. But TVs didn't become staple items in most U.S. households until the mid-1950s (or later). Prior to that, the radio took center stage as both a pivotal source of information and a beacon for family entertainment. The radio was so central to American life that the period between the 1920s and 1950s is referred to as the Golden Age of Radio.

"The radio was a focal point in every family living room," recalls the engineer. "Music, fictional characters and stories, serial adventures, comedy, and world news on the radio were an important part of growing up," says Rick. "I still remember hours of listening to shows in the darkened living rooms of my grandparents' and parents' houses."

Childhood Curiosity

Rick traces his interest in electronics to an initial curiosity about radio in general. "My interest in radio, and what made it work, started at an early age, probably around 7 or 8." Not only was the radio a prominent device in his house, but the radio was also tied to family history for Rick. "I had heard stories from my grandparents that, as a child, my father constructed many crystal sets of his own in the 1930's using wooden pencils. I was fascinated and soon started to build similar radios using a pencil as the coil form and locating the 'cat's whisker' galena crystal detector at the end of the pencil where the eraser was. A suitable antenna and ground completed a working receiver."

Those pencil-based receivers were among the first Rick explored in a series of crystal sets that spanned many years. "I can't remember my first crystal set exactly, although I do recall that it used the galena crystal and a coil wound on a cardboard tube from a roll of toilet paper." Once completed, tested, and evaluated by the young engineer, those first sets were upcycled and reused. A collection of completed sets wasn't an option. "One of the things you did to build your second radio," explains Rick, "was to cannibalize the first."

Tuning In

In his mid-western hometown, there were only four AM radio stations, and he needed earphones to pick up the faint signals transmitted, but it was enough. He was hooked. His early crystal radio experiments fueled an interest Rick satisfied by building hundreds of crystal radio variations through the years, a number he says is not an exaggeration. Supplementing his burgeoning interest in engineering was the fact that crystal radio construction was a common science exploration for kids. "During that period, crystal sets were important chapters in Cub Scout construction projects," recalls Rick. "You could buy the familiar parts like the Philmore^TM galena crystal/whisker assembly in hardware and department stores," he says, adding that even "the comic books of the time always had a page or two of ads for crystal set kits."

Always on the lookout for ways to extend, modify, or innovate upon the core concept of a crystal radio set, Rick says he built some models based on "inspiration from the regular tech magazines of the day, Popular Science, Science and Mechanics, Popular Mechanics, etc." In other models, Rick tested out his own ideas for ways to enhance or improve performance. "A lot of component substitution went hand-in-hand with what I thought must be R&D at the time," notes Rick. "There were very few options to building a basic crystal set, so most of the variants were in coil design/construction and antenna/ground choices." For a young engineer, the quest to find new materials that might work was part of the challenge and part of the fun. "I remember visiting radio and TV repair shops and asking to go through their discards looking for usable components."

No matter how many sets he built, the allure of a better set persisted. Crystal radio gets its name from the use of the early galena crystal, but as new and alternative materials became more available, Rick was able to extend his electronics experiments and enjoy the benefits of advancing technology—at a price. He remembers buying his first germanium transistor in 1956, a Raytheon CK722. "I was 12 years old, and the transistor cost over $7. A fortune at that time. Half a summer of savings."

Once you had a new part, you put it to use, says Rick. "By the mid 1950's, early germanium diodes like the 1N34A became available at low prices for hobbyists. You might save an allowance for weeks to buy one and then use it over and over in place of the galena crystal/cat's whisker that had to be tediously 'probed' to find a sensitive spot that would rectify the radio signal and yield the audio component of the AM broadcast." Diodes brought new sophistication for set builders, and today's students commonly use a small germanium diode, not unlike the one Rick first sampled in the 1950s, in their crystal radio sets.

Rick Marz, crystal radio expert and a volunteer in the Ask an Expert forums

Even after decades in engineering, years in which technology has changed dramatically, Rick's interest in crystal radio has not waned. Following his early interest in engineering, and building off of his father's interest in radio, Rick first explored power electronics and then computer hardware. He studied electrical engineering in college and, in the way things sometimes work, his first career opportunity brought him full circle. "My first job out of school was with a company in Pennsylvania that built—what else—germanium and silicon diodes." Germanium diodes were used as video detectors in early televisions. As the TV industry grew, Rick says the company produced over a million germanium diodes a week to supply the demand. "That's a lot of diodes. Enough to keep any number of crystal set builders supplied forever! I still have a few small drawers full of them for old time's sake."

Passing It On

Though the parts no longer require a whole summer's earnings, Rick continues to enjoy both the history and the tinkering that a crystal radio set invites. He shares his knowledge, expertise, and interest with students who undertake a crystal radio exploration for a science fair, a school project, or as a weekend activity at home. "Several years ago I acquired the parts to create an elegant crystal set that really would be an office conversation piece. It is probably time to get it out of the garage and build it for my grandchildren."

Did you get the flu shot? This year's flu season started early and with a vengeance. How effective is the vaccine against the influenza making the rounds? Using an online bioinformatics tool, students can analyze flu data from previous years and make their own predictions.

Image: Bigstock

Flu season data offers students the chance to use bionformatics tools like BLAST.

Severity of the outbreak varies across the country, but a look at Google's Flu Trends site for the United States shows a predominantly "red" map (compared to the global map). While some reports claim that flu season may be peaking, other sources caution that the season is not over—and there is still time for the flu shot to be helpful. According to the CDC, there is still vaccine to go around. Of the 145 million doses produced for this year, the CDC reports that "as of January 18, 2013, more than 133 million doses [have] been distributed."

Verifying the Vaccine

Reacting to alarming flu-related news reports, people have flocked to pharmacies and doctors' offices in hopes of getting the flu shot before supplies dwindle. The question remains: Will this year's flu vaccine protect you from getting the flu? It's a toss-up.

Each year, the flu vaccine is formulated based on a prediction of three strains of flu that scientists anticipate will be common during the coming October-March flu season. According to the CDC, the 2012-2013 flu vaccine includes "an influenza A (H1N1) virus, an influenza A (H3N2) virus, and an influenza B virus." This year's vaccine is already being tentatively called a success. In a recent briefing, the CDC termed it "62% effective," which they define as meaning that people who get the flu shot this year are about 60 percent less likely to end up in the doctor's office because of the flu.

How accurate were the predictions that led to this year's vaccine formulation? Students interested in genomics and biotechnology can do their own data analysis of this year's flu season using BLAST, the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool. BLAST is a bioinformatics tool used for sequence alignment, a process by which scientists compare two strands of DNA. The "BLASTing Flu Viruses" genomics Project Idea challenges advanced students to do their own detective work and retrospective analysis of the effectiveness of flu vaccines from previous flu seasons as well as to begin analyzing reports and data from the current season (current-season weekly reports are available).

In this project, students can familiarize themselves with several important bioinformatics techniques as they look up gene sequences for the virus strains that were included in certain vaccines and compare those to the strains that were documented as prevalent during the same year's flu season.

Preventing the Spread

While getting the flu vaccine, proactively, is considered by many to be the best way to protect yourself from the flu, being careful to wash hands frequently and effectively is an important step in helping cut down on the spread of any virally transmitted disease. Reminding and better educating students about hand washing is important and can be turned into an eye-opening science project or classroom experiment. See the "Spread the Soap, Not the Germs" microbiology project for a glowing look at germs.

Parts of California play host each year to migrating masses of monarch butterflies that pass a number of months in protected groves, inspiring and astounding naturalists of all ages. The science behind butterfly migration is especially fascinating when you take into account that most butterflies live less than two months!

Image: Kenneth Dwain Harrelson

Yearly butterfly migration provides opportunity for a fluttering science outing for naturalists of all ages. Don't forget your binoculars!

Inspiring Exploration

To supplement or spark a class or family science investigation, students interested in butterflies, migration, or zoology may enjoy:

• National Geographic Readers: Great Migrations Butterflies
• How to Raise Monarch Butterflies: A Step-by-Step Guide for Kids
• The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs: A Scientific Mystery
• The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe (Scientists in the Field Series)

The mysteries of bird migration, and the ways in which they navigate travels of long distances to arrive, year after year, in the same locations, fascinate zoologists. But birds are not the only creatures that migrate or "move" from one location to another during a year.

Flights of Fancy

In parts of California, the winter months offer peak viewing of monarch butterflies. These regal orange and black butterflies travel south during late summer and wait out the winter in protected eucalyptus groves in places like Fremont and Monterey. So many monarchs arrive in Pacific Grove in Monterey County each year, staying between October and February, that the city has dubbed itself "Butterfly Town, U.S.A." In addition to local mandates and fines against harming a butterfly, and an annual butterfly parade, Pacific Grove has trained butterfly docents and a dedicated butterfly sanctuary where visitors can walk through and be amazed by the fluttering of thousands of butterflies high above in the canopy of trees.

A Monarch's Genetics

The butterflies that make the annual migration to California are referred to as the "fourth generation" of monarchs in a year. Monarchs born to the first three generations have a life span of only two to six weeks. The fourth and final generation, however, makes the migration, hibernates in a protected and warmer area, and then returns in the spring to mating and breeding grounds in the North and East to lay eggs on milkweed plants. From the eucalyptus groves to the milkweed-rich habitats, the cycle of migrating monarchs repeats, year after year, beginning with the return of the fourth generation butterflies that lay the eggs representing the first generation of a new year. That the butterflies that make the yearly trek to California or Mexico are four generations removed from the ones who made the trip the previous year is a mindboggling reality and adds to the aura and mystique of these fluttering orange and black insects. With no "veteran" traveler (or parent with firsthand knowledge of migration) to tell them when and where to go, how do they know? What kind of genetic imprinting provides the map for migration? How do the monarchs determine when to leave and when to return?

Making Connections

Unless you have a grove of eucalyptus—or milkweed—in your backyard, your monarch spotting will likely be at a sanctuary as a tourist outing or during the breeding season when monarchs cluster to habitats thriving with milkweed, a plant critical to monarch breeding and to the survival of newly hatched larvae. The larvae feed only on milkweed—and lots of it! In the two weeks before the larvae enters the pupa stage, the larvae grows to an estimated 2,700 times its original size (molting multiple times in the process). What would happen if the milkweed patches the monarchs return to each year disappeared?

While planting certain flowers, or your own row of milkweed bushes, might draw more butterflies to your backyard during spring months, students can more easily explore the role of food source and food preference by experimenting with the eating habits of neighborhood birds. The following Project Ideas help students investigate the relationship between birds and a food source:

• What Seeds Do Birds Prefer to Eat?: Backyard birders know that different birds eat different types of seed and may stock feeders with certain kinds of seed or seed blends in hopes of cultivating a specific group of feathered friends. (The type of bird feeder you use may also make a difference in which birds stop by!) If you are new to watching birds in your area, you can put seed preference to the test in this zoology Project Idea. This project, perfect for family, classroom, or independent science exploration, involves building a four-part feeder that makes it easy to monitor the types of seeds your local birds like best.

  
  With a bit of innovation, students and classes can easily modify and extend this investigation. The partitioned feeder described in the Project Idea keeps the different types of seeds all in proximity of one another. Birds choose, cafeteria-style, what to eat. How would bird activity and behavior change if you used multiple feeders, separate feeders at different locations, each with different types of seed? What might happen if you rotate the seed in the feeders routinely throughout the investigation so that the location of each seed changes?

• How Sweet It Is! Explore the Roles of Color and Sugar Content in Hummingbirds' Food Preferences.: Hummingbirds are adept at finding the sweetest flowers as food sources. Often their selections appear to be the most brightly colored of flowers. Do hummingbirds make a correlation between sweetness and visible color and choose their food sources based on the color? In this zoology science fair project, you can put this question to the test. Which is more important, the color of the food source or the concentration of sugar? Typical backyard hummingbird feeders are filled with a clear solution, but the feeder is often made so that it appears a certain color. In this project, you will create multiple feeders, each with different colors of syrupy hummingbird solution. After testing to see which color your backyard hummingbird favors, you can experiment with the sugar ratio in the different cups to see what happens. Not only will you learn a lot about hummingbird behavior and adaptation, but you may find that your garden needs a certain color of hummingbird feeder, regardless of your own favorite color palette!
• With a Little Bread as Bait, Can You Make a Bird Migrate?: Changes in the location and availability of a food source may force changes in migration patterns. In this zoology Project Idea, students put this idea to a hands-on test on a small scale, at a single outdoor location. After initially feeding birds in two different parts of a large outdoor area (like a park), students can investigate to see what happens when the availability of food in one location changes. How long will it take for the birds to find the other food source?
• Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Saving Migratory Animals: Changes to natural habitats caused by urban expansion can be devastating. When a species only uses a habitat part of the year, it can be easy to overlook or underestimate the impact of urban development and engineering. This science project challenges students to think about the relationship between migration and society and development. What happens when a migrating bird's wintering grounds suddenly disappear? In the case of the butterflies, what would happen if the monarchs arrived in October to find their eucalyptus sanctuary had been replaced by an apartment building? Or, on the flip side, what if the monarch's milkweed breeding grounds were plowed and replaced during the months the monarchs are absent? In this environmental science Project Idea, students use online Movebank data to investigate the habitats and stopover destinations involved in the movement or migration of an individual bird. This project helps students better understand the many locations that may be critical to a species' survival, even if the bird only spends a short time each year in a given place.

First-hand Science

Observing bird and butterfly behavior raises many questions about how they survive, particularly given their unique generational cycles, the importance of their yearly treks, and the specific requirements of their breeding grounds. If you have the opportunity to see the wintering monarchs, it is a sight worth seeing! And if you are curious about animal movement and migration in general, there are many Project Ideas at Science Buddies that enable students to explore further. You can get started by reviewing the roundup in the "Birds on the Move" blog post, and don't miss this student's story about tracking wolf movement.

As the 2013 science fair season gets underway, get inspired by what's possible for student science—and science at home—with a recap of last year's posts about science projects, science news, and family science.

The New Year is underway, and even during the semester break, many students are working with zest, determination, and curiosity on their science fair projects. As we welcome in 2013 and the coming months of the science fair season, here is a brief look back at a few of our favorite Science Buddies blog posts from 2012. Some of these posts highlight science news and ideas for student investigation; others contain strategies and activities for families who want to make more time for science at home. Whether you are still looking for a science fair project or have resolved to make science a more routine part of your family's daily interaction, we recommend this collection of posts:

The above images link to the following blog entries:

• Galaxy Games
• Parent Perspective: Understanding Your Role in Your Student's Science Project
• The Science of Video Games
• Encouraging and Inspiring Female Student Engineers
• Science Fair Projects with Real-World Impact
• Teaching Good Science and Engineering Habits: Keeping a Lab Notebook
• Science and Art: Mutant Sunflowers
• Putty Science: Family Fun with Polymers
• Family Dinner: Serving Up Science
• High School Scientist Develops Cancer Screening Test
• Find a Feather, Pick It Up?
• The Wonder of Bioluminescence: Organisms that Glow
• Arsenic and Rice
• Putting Your Eggs All in One (Dye) Basket
• Licorice Root, Please
• Artificial Intelligence and Cancer Diagnosis: Meet the 2012 Google Science Fair Winner

We are also excited about all of the students who shared their science success stories with the Science Buddies community in 2012. You can reach their stories (and many more) in our Science Buddies in Action area. Are you doing a science project this year and want to share your experience? If so, email Science Buddies at blog@sciencebuddies.org.

While "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" is officially celebrated in February, helping girls understand the creative world of engineering is important all year long. If you love to innovate, imagine, build, tinker, solve problems, or make things, engineering might be just the right area for you—or your student!

Too Young to Be an Engineer?
Have you heard of Becky Schroeder, a teenage inventor who wanted to find a better way to do her homework while waiting in a dark car. Becky's story is one of many inspiring stories about women innovators and engineers you can read in Girls Think of Everything.

Science and Engineering Kits
Looking for a hands-on science activity for a young female engineer? The following science project ideas (some of which have kits in the Science Buddies Store) encourage girls to explore and experiment with an area of science even while allowing room for innovation and creativity.

• Potions and Lotions: Lessons in Cosmetic Chemistry


• The Chemistry of Clean: Make Your Own Soap to Study Soap Synthesis


• Shimmy, Shimmy Soda Pop: Develop Your Own Soda Pop Recipe


• Grasping with Straws: Make a Robot Hand Using Drinking Straws


• The Effect of Bridge Design on Weight Bearing Capacity


• Scintillating Scents: The Science of Making Perfume


• Turn Milk into Plastic!

Do you like chocolate chip cookies? Maybe you make yours using a treasured family recipe, or, like many other people, maybe you use the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips to make "Toll House Cookies." Chocolate chip cookies are a familiar dessert in many households and, arguably, an ingrained part of our culture, but this favorite kind of cookie is really less than a hundred years old!

Chocolate chip cookies are the result of innovation by Ruth Wakefield, one of the proprietors of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts. In a hurry one day, legend has it that Ruth cut a few corners to save time while making a batch of chocolate butter drop cookies. Ruth mixed chunks of chocolate into the dough rather than using melted chocolate. The chunks did not completely melt during baking. With that first batch, Ruth spawned a cookie that would delight cookie and chocolate fans of all ages and would lead to Nestlé's development and production of chocolate chips. It's a story worth thinking about the next time you look at your favorite recipe and wonder what would happen if you changed things, tried something different, or otherwise altered your tried and true formula!

Ruth's story highlights ingenuity. She wasn't really looking to invent a completely new kind of cookie. Instead, she was looking for a better (and faster) approach. Once she tasted the results and saw the reaction of her customers to the cookie, she knew she had created something special. Nestlé knew it, too. In the end, Ruth wound up with a lifetime's supply of chocolate, and her recipe lives on with each package of Nestle chocolate chips.

The historical genesis of the chocolate chip cookie is interesting. You might have picked up bits and pieces of Ruth's story from your chocolate chips bag. But what about the origin of windshield wipers? Kevlar®? Liquid Paper®? Scotchguard^TM? Paper bags? The computer compiler? Behind each of these discoveries and inventions is the story of a female engineer, scientist, or inventor.

A History of Innovation and Invention by Women

Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women,
by Catherine Thimmesh, offers these stories, and many others, for readers of all ages. Chances are good that some of these stories of innovation and invention are ones you have not heard. You may know the product, but you may not know of the woman behind it or "how" the invention came about. Girls Think of Everything does an excellent job spinning tales that are fun to read, offer plenty of wow factor, and combine to paint a powerful and inspiring portrait of women in engineering. What do you think of when you think of an engineer? Girls Think of Everything may challenge your definition of engineers and engineering in a good way!

Some of the discoveries chronicled in Girls Think of Everything started with an accident; others were the result of determined research and development. Some of these inventions were by women working in labs; others were created by women out of necessity or from home. The book, illustrated by Melissa Sweet with engaging illustrations and collages that reinforce the subject matter of each story, invites readers to learn more about women who have made important contributions as inventors, engineers, and scientists. In pages at the front and back of the book, a timeline chronicles inventions and discoveries by women between 3000 B.C. and 1995. It's an impressive look at the role of female innovators, and the book, as a whole, is a wonderful collection for young women. Reading these stories is sure to amaze, inspire, and maybe even propel a future engineer to grab a laboratory notebook and put the steps of the engineering design process in action!

Educating and Supporting Tomorrow's Engineers

Engineers Week, a project of the National Engineers Foundation, and sponsored by companies like Motorola Solutions Foundation, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman, will take place February 17-23, 2013. A collaborative effort, the week encourages the education of students about engineering as a step toward increasing the number of students pursuing engineering degrees. Through community and school activities during this special week, students learn more about engineering and the many kinds of career opportunities that exist. The more models of female scientists and engineers we can provide for students during elementary and middle school, the more young women we can help encourage to explore paths in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. (Note: On the Engineers Week website, teachers can request free kits containing posters, suggested activities, and more, to help promote the week at school.)

Encouraging Female Engineers

February 21, 2013 is "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day." The day is an important part of Engineers Week, but the core concept behind introducing young women to engineering transcends the single day and has become an important cause, year-round, for organizations like Motorola Solutions Foundation. Raising awareness among young women about engineering as a creative, innovative, and collaborative field of study and encouraging and nurturing girls' interest in engineering is important every day, all year long.

The next time you use your windshield wipers on a rainy day, give a thought to Mary Anderson. If you don't know her story, check out Girls Think of Everything. Mary's story is one of many to share with students and family members.

For even more inspiration, watch the "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" video, created by the National Engineers Foundation.

Motorola Solutions Foundation is a supporting sponsor of Science Buddies.

Two students in LA took an audible cue from the community for their fourth-grade science project and designed a sound-based video game. Their first video game design project gave them an inside look into how games are designed, built, and tested to meet the needs of various audiences.

For their fourth-grade science project, Zach and Talia created a video game called Blong. Their game, reminiscent of Pong, was designed with special attention to sound cues so that it can be played by a wide audience, including by those who are visually-impaired. You can find other inspiring success stories on our Science Buddies in Action page.

There are countless angles for possible student exploration, and Science Buddies Video & Computer Games area offers a wide range of Project Ideas that encourage students to test, create, or experiment with video game design and technology.

Meeting Students on Familiar Ground

When Zach Weiss and Talia Glazer, fourth grade students at Brawerman Elementary School, discovered the "Creating a Video Game for the Blind" Project Idea after using the Topic Selection Wizard, they found a project that combined their interest in technology with their desire to help others. The Project Idea sparked their curiosity in terms of learning how to create a video game, but it also got them thinking about the video games they play. Can those same games be played by everyone? Do visually impaired students also play video games? Can games be created that are similarly fun for all audiences? For two fourth-grade students with no experience designing a video game, deciding to see what it takes to create a game that works for vision-impaired or blind players may sound ambitious, but Zach and Talia were up to the challenge.

With the support of their science teacher, who encouraged her students to investigate the implications of their projects beyond the walls of the classroom, Zach and Talia met with a group of teenagers at a local center for the blind. The team quickly learned that, like many other teens, students at the Center enjoy video games. Unfortunately, many games cannot be fully enjoyed (or won) if you can't "see" the game. The teens Zach and Talia met game them plenty of information about the kinds of features that are important in a game that can be played by blind gamers. "We asked them what elements they thought video games needed," says Zach. "They said lots of sound elements, commands, and cues, so we decided to create a video game with all of these elements."

Following the steps of the Engineering Design Process, Zach and Talia outlined their goals, brainstormed possible game types and storyboards, and evaluated game creation environments. After considering many options, they decided to create a game in the tradition of the classic two-paddle Pong. Though the team chose a vintage game as a conceptual framework, Zach and Talia planned to give their version a major update, one that would tip the scales in terms of sound cues and would not require sight to play. Using the "Creating a Video Game for the Blind" Project Idea and GameMaker Lite, they began developing Blong.

Designing Blong

Zach admits there was a learning curve to working with GameMaker. But the more they tested, tweaked, and retested their game during development, the easier they found the design and programming process. In the end, the two had a great time working together, exchanging ideas, and building a game that met their objectives.

"Our video game has tons of sound elements," says Zach. "For example, when the paddle 'bumps' into the top or bottom wall, the player hears a 'bump' sound." Cues like these, and other sound elements that signal certain actions or events, help orient the player both in terms of the game mechanisms and the game play. In addition to boosting the game's sound-based environment, Zach and Talia also paid careful attention to the speed of the game and the visual contrast of the game, elements of game design the teens they met told them can make or break the playability of a game for visually impaired players.

Testing Blong

Playtesting a game in development is often one of the most fun aspects of a game design project. For Zach and Talia, playtesting was critical, says Zach, but to accurately evaluate how the development was going, they had to continually put themselves in the position of their target audience. After all, they were not creating just a video game. They were making a game that can be successfully played entirely based on the game's sound cues. "We tested the game with our eyes closed in order to adjust the speed of the ball and paddle and to determine the types and amounts of sounds cues to use," says Zach. In addition to testing for playability, Zach and Talia also got a firsthand look at the rigorous levels of testing and troubleshooting that often go into game design and computer programming projects. "We tested each feature of the game throughout development," says Zach, "to make sure that it still worked, to determine if any of the newly added features conflicted with the earlier features, and to debug the errors that we found."

Creating Blong was challenging for the team, but the satisfaction of having made their own game scored big with the team in the end. "The best part of the science project," says Zach, "was programming the Blong video game that my partner and I developed!"

Science Projects Spark Lasting Interest

Zach loves to read, play video games, and participate in school sports and extracurricular activities like the Green Committee, school newspaper, choir, and orchestra. He was already interested in technology at the outset of his science project, but his experience with Blong cemented both his interest in pursuing a high-tech career and his enthusiasm for science fairs. "Creating a video game for the blind was an amazing experience," says Zach, attributing part of the reward to the community service aspect that gave his and Talia's project real-world significance.

Already Zach has continued to expand his knowledge of video game design and took a summer class to learn about using another popular game design creation tool. Blong may have been his and Talia's first science fair project and the first video game they designed, but we hope there are many games yet to be created in their future!

When it comes to customizing robots, the spirit of innovation is alive and well in afterschool programs around the country. Extracurricular engineering and robotics clubs may provide a welcome outlet and important mentoring for students. From brainstorming designs to nuts and bolts building to learning how to integrate servo motors and computer programming, robotics projects capitalize on a student's love of tinkering—with the possibility of a clear reward in the end, a bot that does what you want it to do. A new trio of Science Buddies robotics engineering Projects Ideas offer students blueprints for hands-on exploration. Whether it is a student's first robot or merely the next, these projects offer independent challenge for at-home innovation or for a science and engineering design project assignment.

Engineers of all ages are often intrigued by the challenge of creating a robot that can make art. Some art bots are designed to duplicate or recreate a given image. Some draw pre-defined shapes or images. Some follow in the footprints of famous abstract expressionists. With new robotics engineering projects at Science Buddies, students can use the VEX system to design a robot that can draw. (A Project Kit is available in the Science Buddies Store.) With the Engineering Design Process and Science Buddies Project Ideas as a guide, what kind of art bot will you build?

An Art Automaton

Did you read or see The Invention of Hugo Cabret with your family? Did you marvel over and wonder about the mysterious automaton that Hugo's father, and later Hugo, work to repair? The automaton in Hugo Cabret is designed to write or draw something, and seeing what the machine does when Hugo successfully restores it and inserts the heart-shaped key is part of the intrigue of the story by Brian Selznik. Automata (more than one automaton) belong to a category of engineering in which a non-electric machine is created to perform an automated task. These machines, often made out of complicated clockworks, are a form of robotics.

LEGO® Robotics

In addition to VEX robotics systems, students can also explore robotics using LEGO® Mindstorms®. The new "X Marks the Spot: Build a Robot to Protect Your Treasures" robotics Project Idea challenges students with a Mindstorms system to build and program a robot sentry to guard and protect a designated space.

Engineering Steps

When an elementary school student watches a mechanical bot crawl across the table and notices that if she presses and holds both of the micro-controller buttons at once, the insect will crawl in a circle rather than in straight lines, what happens next? Maybe she experiments with each button separately. Maybe she evaluates the difference in the bot's speed based on how she uses the buttons. Maybe she sees the circular shape of the bot's movement and realizes it could potentially draw a circle.

The insect doesn't really have anything to do with drawing or markers. It's just a tiny bug version of a classic remote-controlled toy car. It is an upgrade over last year's bug, however. That one just had an on and off switch. Once on, it moved without stopping. This model has given her control over the movement. In testing that control, she's made a hypothetical leap. When the student sees the circle and makes a connection to something else that can be done by combining the bug's motions and another implement (a marker), there is magic. Testing her idea by wedging a marker through the bug's appendages and setting it loose on top of a piece of paper may, in fact, generate a circle. If it takes several tries to find the right angle at which to position the marker, or just how far you need to stick it through the bug's legs, that's part of the process. Similarly, pens and markers of different weights may work differently&mddash;or may not work at all. The bug is small and lightweight. That has an impact on what kind of marking instrument the bug can drag along in its circuitous path. But, finally, there is a circle. A circle that a small bug robot has drawn.

In this case, the ability to control the drawing process is limited. But for many parents and teachers, the simple "aha" moment, and the satisfaction of seeing the circle on the page, is an important part of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. To feed this kind of excitement about engineering, robotics clubs and groups are springing up in an increasing number of schools and after-school programs, often with the support of companies like Motorola Solutions Foundation. Many of these groups work with VEX robotics kits. Part screw-it-together, part brainstorm and modify, part hacker DIY, part programming, and part collaboration with peers and clusters of parents, teachers, and role models, VEX systems can be a fulcrum for middle and high school robotics exploration.

For the Game of It

This year, student robotics teams planning to participate in VEX competitions are preparing for the VEX Sack Attack. To succeed in the Sack Attack challenge, teams will have to design and build a bot that can quickly and efficiently scoop up "sacks" and deposit them in a scoring area to earn more points for the team than the bot on the other side of the 12' x 12' arena within a set amount of time. Different colored sacks earn different points, and there are multiple types of goals, each worth different point values. In preparation for an official bot versus bot Sack Attack showdown, robotics team members often meet in the afternoons and on weekends. Many teams, especially at the middle school level, first assemble a baseline or "kit" sack attack bot. The "kit" bot is functional, but as groups test and observe their bots abilities, they are encouraged to think about ways to enhance the bot's ability to quickly and efficiently perform its task. Following steps of the Engineering Design Process, students collaborate customizing their robot and prototyping and testing new features, behaviors, and programming. What modifications might make the bot easier to maneuver or better able to pick up and deposit sacks? What custom behaviors might give their bot an edge?

Building Bots

Using core VEX components and extrapolating from robotics club investigations, students can independently design and test custom bots built to perform a range of different tasks. An exciting new trio of Science Buddies Project Ideas challenges students to use a VEX kit to create a marker-wielding robot, one that can draw a picture. The tiered suite of projects begins with "Robot Picasso: Building a Robot That Creates Art." In this robotics Project Idea, students are guided in thinking through ways to turn the Vex claw bot into a picture-drawing robot. While basic guidelines for assembly are given, students will need to innovate and troubleshoot their own drawings and designs to construct their drawing bot. At the same time, students will face the limitations of their bot as they test to determine what it can and can't successfully draw—and why.

With the basic "Robot Picasso" drawing bot on hand, a young engineer can tackle more sophisticated challenges to give the bot more refinement and the ability to use more than one color or other tools. The "Motorized Michelangelo: Building an Art Robot with Servo Motors *" Abbreviated Project Idea encourages students to incorporate a servo motor in the robot, allowing greater control. This robot, for example, can be programmed to lift the marker at a certain point rather than drawing a continuous and never-ending line. The "Drawing Dalibot: Designing an Art Robot That Switches Colors *" Abbreviated Project Idea challenges the student to extend the exploration and enable the bot to use more than one color. Controlling how multiple colors are used, selected, and changed offers a fun and sophisticated robotics engineering project that requires the use of servo motors and programming using RobotC.

These three Project Ideas are just the beginning. We encourage students to adapt the core project concepts to further refine the art bot or to create an entirely new kind of robot that builds upon behaviors and functionality from the art bot! Before your students disassemble and start something new, send Science Buddies a picture. We would love to see what your students imagine, innovate, and build!

Last month's interest in goblins and ghouls has faded, but you can spice up November classroom and family science discussions with a blend of astronomy and a fitting 'trick' of the eye in preparation for this month's full moon!

From astronomy projects to tests of human perception, the changing faces of the moon invites student science exploration.

Students curious about the full moon illusion can learn more about afterimages in the "Are Your Eyes Playing Tricks on You? Discover the Science Behind Afterimages!" Project Idea. For classroom exploration, the "Discovering the Colors Behind Afterimages" classroom activity guides teachers in preparing a fun, short, hands-on science project.

The Night Sky

How bright is the moon when it is full? How much does the moon's brightness vary during its different phases? As November's moon cycles through the phases, these are questions young astronomers can put to the test! The "Measuring the Moon" astronomy Project Idea guides students in observing the moon throughout the month and recording light meter readings. Using this data, students can make correlations between phases of the moon and its brightness.

Lunar Illusion

The "Measuring the Moon" project helps encourage students to gather and synthesize firsthand data to learn more about the moon. The "I See a Full Moon Rising...and Shrinking...or Do I?" Project Idea, on the other hand, prompts an exploration of the way we perceive the moon as it appears to climb into the night sky. This Health & Human Biology Project Idea helps students investigate the way the brain miscalculates the size of the moon in different locations, a trick of the mind which leads to the full moon illusion. In this project, students learn more about afterimages and Emmert's law. With a series of hands-on tests, students can put Emmert's law in motion as they investigate how the perceived size of an afterimage changes in relation to one's distance from the viewing surface.

Making Connections

Just weeks after Hurricane Sandy, the after-effects of the monstrous tropical storm that swept across Eastern states are still making headline news. While many things contributed to the storm's ferocity, the storm also approached land during a full moon. Which phase of the moon has the most powerful effect on tidal patterns? Using historical data, your students can find out in the "The Moon and Tides" astronomy Project Idea. For other suggestions for student science projects related to Hurricane Sandy, see the "Frankenstorm Science: Hurricane Sandy" blog post.

What kind of corn is in your favorite corn chip? Current debate in California surrounds the labeling of genetically modified foods and foods made from genetically engineered crops. Students can get hands-on and learn more about genetically modified organisms with biotechnology science Project Ideas from Science Buddies and Bio-Rad Laboratories.

(Image: Bigstock)

Debate over the labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms has been headline news in the months leading up to this week's election, especially in California where voters are considering Proposition 37. Students can learn more about genetic engineering and modification of foods—and even put favorite foods to the test using gel electrophoresis. They can also plant and grow genetically modified seeds and see how they fare against other seeds.

This week, voters around the country will cast their votes on a variety of local and national issues. In California, one of the hotly contested issues involves the labeling of foods. Proposition 37 seeks to require food companies to clearly note whether or not a product is genetically modified (GM). Currently, in the U.S., product labels do not have to say if a food contains genetically modified organisms (GMO), and foods that contain less than 5% GMO content can be labeled as GMO-free. On the flip side, a high percentage of U.S. crops involved in the production of staple corn- and soy-based ingredients are grown from GM seeds.

The Right to Know?

Proposition 37 and the issue of more transparency when it comes to GM foods has been heavily debated in California, and manufacturers around the country will be watching as voters weigh in on the issue of food labeling. If passed, Proposition 37 will have a widespread impact as companies that sell food to California stores will all need to change labeling practices to meet California regulations. While California is the first U.S. state to petition for GM labeling, many other countries require such labeling, including England, Spain, Italy, Australia, China, Japan, and Russia.

Similar but Different

If you know someone who is a gardener or a farmer, you may know about hybrid plants and crops. Creating a hybrid plant involves taking two varieties of a plant and cross-breeding the two to create a new species—one that may be hardier, for example. Careful cultivation of hybrids and, in some cases, additional levels of cross-breeding, leads to new varieties, types of plants. Chances are that some of the vegetables you eat are of hybrid varieties. For instance, Early Girl tomatoes are a hybrid, as is Yellow Hybrid Sweet Corn. Hybridization and genetic modification may sound similar as both seek to create crops that are "improved" or "better" in some way, but hybridization and genetic modification are different in fundamental ways: while hybridization is limited to moving traits between organisms that can interbreed, genetic modification can also move traits between organisms that could never breed.

A genetically modified organism is one that has been altered in a lab by scientists who directly change the genetic structure. Many kinds of genetic modification are possible, including introducing genetic material from other organisms or modifying an existing gene. GMO research is used to enhance and strengthen crops by giving them qualities that may make them more successful as crops, easier to grow in certain areas, longer lasting once harvested, more nutritional, or a better choice for global populations. Genetic modifications, for example, may include giving crops the ability to fight off insects or resist pesticides, as in the case of Bt-corn. Bt-corn is a type of corn that has been genetically altered so that it contains a gene that serves as a natural insecticide. Rather than farmers having to use insecticides on the crops, the corn contains its own insect-killing gene because of a bacteria-based gene that it now carries as part of its genetic makeup. The gene used in Bt-corn comes from a naturally occurring soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis and targets certain kinds of insects, not all.

Golden rice is another example of a GM food. The rice is golden in color because it has been genetically modified to contain beta-carotene, which the body converts into nutritionally-important A-vitamins. By increasing the nutritional value of rice, a staple food in some underdeveloped countries, many may benefit from getting the essential vitamin in their diets through a common food.

What's at Issue?

While GMOs are created to address both local and global problems, some worry that GM foods may have unintended health and environmental consequences, including ones that may not be detected or realized right away. Proponents of genetic modification of foods and crops, on the other hand, insist that GMOs are safe. In a recent statement on the issue from its board of directors, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) writes "the science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe." The AAAS statement goes on to note that "contrary to popular misconceptions, GM crops are the most extensively tested crops ever added to our food supply."

The Foods You Eat

Even if you are not eating genetically modified corn straight from the field, many products made from corn, including some corn chips and cereals, for example, use Bt-corn. Similarly, high fructose corn syrup, a common sweetener, is made from corn. Especially if you eat processed and ready-to-eat foods, chances are good that some of the foods you eat contain GMOs. In most cases, you cannot tell by looking or tasting a food whether or not it has been made using GMOs or GMO byproducts. This is the issue behind Proposition 37. If passed, producers and manufacturers will be required to label foods so that consumers will know whether or not a food contains GMOs. Consumers then will make individual decisions about what foods they buy and eat.

Already consumers make similar decisions about buying organic foods, buying foods with certain kinds of chemicals, dyes, oils, additives, and preservatives. Similarly, mandated labeling has given consumers the ability to monitor and compare the fat, calorie, vitamin, sugar, and protein contents of foods. If GM labeling is added, it will be another level of information consumers have when making choices at the grocery store. Proponents of Proposition 37 argue that consumers have a right to actively make this choice, while opponents argue that there are large economic consequences to labeling, particularly if consumers are not educated about genetically modified foods. "Legally mandating such a label can only serve to mislead and falsely alarm consumers," concludes the AAAS statement.

Making Connections

Regardless of the outcome of next week's election and Proposition 37, understanding what it means for a food to be a GMO, and how that compares to the kind of hybrids that plant biologists create, is important for student scientists. While you can't pick up a bag of chips and do a taste-test to detect GMOs, investigating favorite products and testing for the presence of GMOs is something students interested in biotechnology can pursue. While not a science project for the home kitchen, a student or class with access to a research laboratory with PCR equipment can analyze common foods using the GMO Investigator Kit from the Bio-Rad Biotechnology Explorer Program. For students looking to conduct an individual biotechnology project, the "Genetically Modified Foods*" Abbreviated Project Idea offers a starting point for devising an independent science project on this topic. (Note: a teacher's assistance is required to order from Bio-Rad Laboratories. The GMO Investigator Kit is sold as a classroom kit.)

Students can also experiment firsthand with growing GM seeds. The "May the Best Plant Win! Experiment with Genetically Modified Seeds" Project Idea guides students in growing and observing the interaction between plants that have been genetically modified to resist herbicides and other plants. By planting wild seeds alongside GM seeds, students can investigate what happens when the two types compete for resources.

(Image: Evan-Amos, Wikipedia)

With a bit of planning, you can turn a pile of Halloween loot into an engaging science activity!

After the sampling, divvying, trading, and general post-Halloween assessment, what can you do with all of the goodies that ended up in a trick or treat bag? With a bit of ingenuity, your trick or treaters can refocus their energies for some sweet science. Here are some starter ideas for home and class: Count some of it. Use some of it for a survival game. Investigate candy colors. Explore the relationship between candy shape and volume. Do some of your experimentation by the glow of a waning light-up stick and with the vestiges of your pumpkin patch playlist wafting in the background, and you've got the makings of post-Halloween science fun.

A Closer Look

Before the moon rises and skeletons rattle tonight, you can put a visual face on Halloween (beyond the flickering pumpkins) by carving your way through a Halloween-themed infographic or two. With the popularity of the infographic form, there are many floating around. These two, with their spill of numbers to ponder in relation to today's frightful festivities, caught my eye in the wee hours of morning, the pumpkin watching eerily from the kitchen counter, and the strains of the Monster Mash queued up and ready to go for the morning procession to school. (I Want Candy is somewhere in the mix, too.)

 
(Click either image to view full image.)

Keep in mind that anyone can make and post an infographic. Most contain sources so you can do your own checking and additional research.

From glow sticks and colored candies to haunted house-worthy music, there is plenty of Halloween science to uncover!

Tap in to student excitement about Halloween to make engaging connections to science. There is plenty to talk about in class—and plenty they can put to the test!

• Candy Chromatography
• Glow-in-the-dark Chemistry
• Trick-or-Treat Science
• Good Hand Washing? Turn on the Black Light!
• Vampire Bats and a Bat Detector
• Sounds Like Halloween
• Biodiversity at Halloween: A Spider Variety Show
• Zombie Preparedness

What is your favorite science project using leftover candy? We'd love to know! Email blog@sciencebuddies.org to share your story.

This fourth-grade student had fun building and playing with a solar-powered bot—and learned about alternative energy and electricity in the process!

As a fourth-grade student, Keeley (above) investigated how effective different light sources are for a solar-powered robot. Read about other student science successes in the Science Buddies in Action area.

Part of the newly launched Robotics Interest Area at Science Buddies, the "Frightened Grasshopper" Project Idea guides elementary students in an introductory exploration of one aspect of robotics—power. The project, which invites an investigation of solar and alternative energy, uses a small and inexpensive robotic bug to let students see, hands-on, how a solar panel works to convert certain kinds of light energy to electrical energy. When Keeley bought his materials for the project, he decided to mix things up a bit. Instead of the grasshopper kit, he took a two-legged approach with the T3 robot, a fitting selection as he asked: can man-made light effectively power a solar robot?

Keeley got help from his Dad with the construction of the robot. "Some of the design details were pretty tough," he admits. The T3 converts to several engaging forms, robot, tank, and scorpion, but the shape of the bot doesn't really matter in this robotics investigation. What matters is the size of the solar panel, the source of light, and the intensity of the radiant energy from the light. Once the solar panel was in place, Keeley was all set to test a range of light sources, including light bulbs in varying wattages, all pitted against the Sun.

Many questions can be asked in this experiment, starting with whether or not man-made light works for "solar power." If it does work, why and how? Does artificial light work as well as natural light? How long does solar power last? What happens overnight or on a cloudy day? For a young engineer, observing a robot's behavior and energy when it gets its juice from different kinds of light is fun but also offers first-hand insight and a chance to draw conclusions and formulate other questions about alternative energy.

At ten, Keeley is interested in robotics, electronics, video game design, and other areas of physical science, which made the "Frightened Grasshopper" project an exciting choice for him. The project also gave him a chance to explore questions related to energy and power, questions that have real-world significance and that built upon his core interest in engineering. At the fair, Keeley's investigation earned a repeat first place in the Physical Sciences division. He then moved on to the district science fair, where he took fifth place.

Keeley is already looking forward to this year's science fair. In addition to feeding his enthusiasm for science, his first two successful fairs have given him confidence. "I have already picked out my project, thanks to Science Buddies," Keeley told us. "But you will have to wait before I tell you what it is. I want the Triple Crown!"

We can't wait to hear what he chooses and where science takes this young engineer next.

Share Your Robotics Stories

Are you or your students interested in robotics? We would like to hear your robotics stories! If you have completed or are considering a robotics project for your science or engineering project, let us know about your project or experience.