Chemistry Project Ideas



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Have you ever mixed together salt and pepper? Isn't it fun to see how all of those tiny grains of salt and pepper mix together! But what if you had to separate them out again? Do you have nightmares of tiny tweezers, a magnifying glass, and hours spent picking grains of salt and pepper apart? Don't be afraid, there is another way! Using the differences in solubility between salt and pepper, you can find out the simple "solution" to this problem. Making your own bubble solution is fun, but sometimes the bubbles don't seem to work as well as the solutions you buy in the store. In this experiment you can test if adding corn syrup or glycerin to your bubble solution will make it just as good as the stuff you can buy. This experiment will have you blowing bubbles! Have you ever wondered how fun toys like Silly Putty, Gak, and Slime are made? These products are so much fun because of the properties of polymers, which make them delightfully bouncy, stretchy, sticky, moldable, breakable, hard, soft, and just plain fun! In this experiment you can be the developer of your own putty product by changing the ratio of ingredients to change the physical properties of your putty polymer. By describing the physical properties of your results, you can choose the best recipe for your new product. This experiment is for all the kids out there who love boiled cabbage! You say you don't like cabbage? Well maybe you will like this amazing color-changing liquid you can make with cabbage. Which solutions around your house can make the cabbage juice change color? Find out while you learn about acids and bases and how to test for them. Here is a riddle for you: what kind of rock grows? The answer is: rock candy! This delicious candy is actually crystallized sugar and you can "grow" it from a sugar-water solution. In this science fair project you'll learn how to grow your very own rock candy and determine if using seed crystals changes the growth rate of your sugar crystals. Do you ever wonder how markers are made? Where do all of those colors come from? Many of the colorful dyes we use come from plant pigments. Pigments are what make the world around us so colorful. How do chemists turn those natural plant pigments into art supplies? In this science project, become a chemist and make your own marker out of a drinking straw and homemade plant dye! Sometimes science can be really messy or use pretty disgusting ingredients. That is what it takes to understand how the world works, even if the experiment isn't pretty. Do you like chemical reactions that stink and ooze foamy bubbles? Do you think it sounds fun to make a super gross liver smoothie? Then this is the experiment for you! Many substances are actually mixtures of different things. For example, milk, which looks like it is one substance, is actually a mixture of many different solids and liquids. Chromatography is a technique that is used to separate mixtures. In this experiment you will study the substances that make up different inks by using paper chromatography. Alka-Seltzer® tablets fizz furiously when dropped into water. The moment the tablet starts dissolving, a chemical reaction occurs that releases carbon dioxide gas. Can you make Alka-Seltzer® fizz faster or slower by changing the temperature of the water? How big of a difference in the rate of a chemical reaction can temperature make? Some chemical reactions occur explosively fast, others may occur almost imperceptibly s-l-o-w-l-y. This project explores what effect the particle size of the reactants has on the speed of a chemical reaction: production of carbon dioxide gas by an Alka-Seltzer® tablet. The clothes you wear are made of fibers that come from many different sources. Some fabrics are made from natural fibers, and some from manufactured or totally synthetic fibers. In this project you'll explore how different fiber types react with dye. You'll be dye-ing to find out which works best! You know that water can exist in three separate phases: solid (ice), liquid (water), and vapor (steam). To change from one phase to another, you simply add (or remove) heat. When water boils, what happens to molecules (for example sugar or salt) that are dissolved in the water? Do they boil off too, or do they stay behind? This is a simple "kitchen chemistry" project about acid/base chemistry. Scientists measure the acidity or alkalinity of a solution using a logarithmic scale called the pH scale. In this project you'll learn about the pH scale, and you'll make your own pH indicator paper using a pH-sensitive dye that you'll extract from red cabbage. You can use your pH paper to measure the acidity/alkalinity of various household solutions. Quick, what's your favorite color of M&Ms® candy? Do you want to know what dyes were used to make that color? Check out this project to find out how you can do some scientific detective work to find out for yourself. This project will teach you the basics of analytical chemistry, which is a must for students who want to go into chemistry or materials science. The molecules in objects we see all around us are constantly attracting each other. Different materials can be attracted or repelled depending upon their molecular structure. We can utilize the different attractive forces between substances to separate a mixture of compounds. Chromatography is a method to separate mixtures and identify each compound in the mixture. You will separate ink components found in different marker using a strip of paper, chalk and different liquids. Chromatography is a method used to separate mixtures of compounds and to identify each compound in the mixture. You may have separated the different inks in a black marker by using a strip of paper and water. There are many different types of chromatography: paper, thin-layer, high-performance thin-layer, gas, and more. You will be using paper or thin-layer chromatography to analyze the compounds from different plants. Chromatography is used by analytical chemists, organic chemists, and many other types of scientists since it is so easy and affordable. If you want to get a head start in chemistry, this is a great way to do so. If you live in a place that gets cold in the winter, you've probably seen trucks out spreading a mixture of sand and salt on the streets after a snowfall to help de-ice the road. Have you ever wondered how this works? This basic chemistry project can give you some clues. Have you ever wondered what makes water 'bead' up on a freshly waxed car? In this project you'll investigate the chemistry of surface tension by measuring how many drops of water a penny can hold. What happens if you add salt or detergent to the water? If you like to bake, this could be a good project for you! Have you ever wondered about the purpose of each of the ingredients in your favorite recipes? Here's a scientific method for finding out what the separate ingredients do! Did you know that cosmetic companies employ teams of specialized chemists to develop and test each new line of make up, perfume, lotion, or soap? Here's a project that lets you be the cosmetic chemist. It shows you how to manufacture your own lip gloss right in your kitchen using a short list of simple ingredients. Check it out and then apply some creative cosmetic science in your own experiment. There's nothing quite like the smell of fresh-baked muffins for breakfast on a Saturday morning! If you're into baking, you might want to try this project, which will give you insight into some of the chemistry that's going on in your muffin batter. You'll get some practical knowledge about substituting ingredients. Who knows, it may even get you started on the path to some new culinary inventions!
Have you ever tried to make parts of your hair lighter than the rest of your hair? Perhaps the way you tried to do it did not lighten it or maybe it turned out a weird orange color? With this science project you can understand why. Science Fair Project image
This is a "kitchen chemistry" project that uses chemicals from the supermarket to test for the presence of iodide in salt. Iodide is a micronutrient that is added to some preparations of table salt. Which type or orange juice has the most vitamin C? In this project you'll learn how to measure the amount of vitamin C in a solution using an iodine titration method. You'll compare the amount of vitamin C in three different types of orange juice: home-made, premium not-from-concentrate, and juice made from frozen concentrate. Which do you think will have the most vitamin C? There are many different types of vinegar that you can buy to use around the kitchen for cooking and pickling. The chemical compound that gives vinegar its tart taste and pungent smell is acetic acid. Do different vinegars have different amounts of acetic acid? How much variation is there between the different types? Find out for yourself with this project. Are oranges highest in vitamin C when they are fresh from the tree (or, in a pinch, the grocery shelf)? In this project you'll learn how to measure the amount of vitamin C in a solution using an iodine titration method. This is a modern version of a classic experiment by Jacques Charles on the volume of a gas at different temperatures. Charles discovered the relationship between volume and temperature of gases that now bears his name. This project shows you a simple method for re-creating this famous experiment. This is a straightforward, fun project to measure the rate of the chemical reaction that occurs when Alka-Seltzer® tablets are plopped into water. You'll track the volume of carbon dioxide gas produced at regular intervals after the reaction begins. How does changing the temperature of the water affect the production of gas? The ingredients in Alka-Seltzer® tablets undergo a chemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide gas as soon as the tablets hit water. Do you think you can cause the tablets to produce gas faster by breaking them into smaller pieces before dropping them in water? Find out for yourself with this project. Have you ever wondered how nutritionists know how many Calories a certain food contains? In this project you'll learn a method for measuring how much chemical energy is available in different types of food. You will build your own calorimeter to capture the energy released by burning a small food item, like a nut or a piece of popcorn. This project gives a new meaning to the phrase "burning calories." Have you ever made your own ice cream? In order to make the mixture cold enough to freeze, you surround the container with ice and rock salt. How does the addition of salt (or other substances) affect the freezing point of water? Find out with this project. Many essential chemical reactions and natural biochemical processes occur in liquid solutions, so understanding the chemical properties of liquid solutions is fundamentally important. This project asks the basic question, how much of a substance can dissolve in water, for three different substances: ordinary table salt, Epsom salts, and sugar. This is a modern version of a classic experiment by Robert Boyle on the compressibility of gases. Boyle discovered the relationship between pressure and volume of gases that now bears his name. This project shows you a simple method for re-creating this famous experiment.


Additional Project Ideas

Note: The following project ideas are abbreviated, without notes to start your background research or a procedure for how to do the experiment. You can identify abbreviated project ideas by the asterisk at the end of the title. If you want a project idea with full instructions, please pick one without an asterisk.

There are three different kinds of polymers used for kitchen plastic wrap: polyethylene (e.g., Handiwrap or Glad Wrap), polyvinyl chloride (e.g., Reynold's Plastic Wrap) and polyvinylidene chloride (e.g., Saran Wrap, which is almost 90% polyvinylidene chloride). Which of these materials is least permeable to water vapor? Or, in other words, which... There are three different kinds of polymers used for kitchen plastic wrap: polyethylene (e.g., Handiwrap or Glad Wrap), polyvinyl chloride (e.g., Reynold's Plastic Wrap) and polyvinylidene chloride (e.g., Saran Wrap, which is almost 90% polyvinylidene chloride). Which of these materials is least permeable to oxygen? When you slice an apple, the... In this project you'll make a liquid that will contradict your expectations. Hold it loosely in your hand and it will drip off your fingers, but grab it tightly and it will feel solid. Slap a bowl of it with a spoon, and instead of splattering, it solidifies. Do background research on colloids, and be sure you can explain the following terms:... Here's a chemistry project for a beginning scientist. You'll need two 100 ml graduated cylinders, rubbing alcohol, water and liquid food dye. (You can make your own measuring cylinder from a recycled jar: tape a vertical label on the jar and carefully add water 1/4-cup at a time; mark the level on the label with each addition.) Measure 50 ml... Some laundry detergents have added enzymes that break down proteins, helping to remove them from the cloth fibers, and thus remove stains. You can perform a scientific test of these enzymes' stain-fighting ability. Do background research on the enzyme(s) in the detergent, and on the substances you choose for making the stains. Try to predict for... Some plastics undergo an unusual transition, from a hard, glassy state to a soft, rubbery state, with increased temperature. For this project, you should do background research on the effects of temperature on different types of plastics. Make sure that you understand the difference between thermosetting and thermoplastic polymers. ... Disposable diapers contain a polymer, called sodium acrylate, which is useful for absorbing water. Do background research to learn about sodium acrylate, and how it reacts with water. Make sure that you understand the terms hydrophilic, polarity and hydrogen bonding. Cut out the middle, padded section of a disposable diaper.... A solution consists of a solute dissolved in a solvent. A solution is saturated when no additional solute will dissolve in it. You'll need a gram balance, a 100 ml graduated cylinder, three beakers or glass jars, three saucers, water, 50 g non-iodized salt (NaCl), 50 g Epsom salts (MgSO4) and 250 g sugar... A solution consists of a solute dissolved in a solvent. A solution is saturated when no additional solute will dissolve in it. Can a saturated solution of sodium chloride dissolve any Epsom salts? Can a saturated solution of Epsom salts dissolve any sodium chloride? How does solubility vary with temperature? How does... You can take advantage of electrochemistry and make a battery to clean tarnished silverware without scrubbing. You should learn about how batteries work and study oxidation-reduction reactions so that you can explain how this process works. You'll need a pan large enough to hold the pieces of silverware, and deep enough to cover them in solution... Yeast contains an enzyme, called catalase, that acts as a catalyst for the reaction that breaks down hydrogen peroxide into oxygen and water (2H2O2  → 2H2O + O2). Safety note: oxygen is a highly reactive gas, adult supervision recommended for this project. For your background research, be...

Resources

  • Paper chromatography is an inexpensive method for analyzing some types of chemical mixtures. Here are our recommendations for paper and readily available solvents for experiments involving paper chromatography:
    Papers and Solvents for Paper Chromatography
  • The following link has a printable, one-page version of the Periodic Table of the Elements, the indispensable organizational chart for chemists:
    Printable periodic table

Sources for Additional Project Ideas

  • Exploratorium, 1998. "Outrageous Ooze," The Exploratorium [accessed January 18, 2006] http://www.exploratorium.edu/science_explorer/ooze.html.
  • Gardner, R., 1999. Science Projects About Kitchen Chemistry. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
  • Goodstein, M., 2004. Plastics and Polymers Science Fair Projects: Using Hair Gel, Soda Bottles, and Slimy Stuff. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers.
  • Hamamah, A. A., 2005. "How Do Substrate Amount, Temperature, pH, Enzyme Amount, and Inhibitor Affect Catalase Activity?" California State Science Fair 2005 Project Summary [accessed January 18, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/Current/Projects/J0406.pdf.
  • Stretton, T., 2004. "Solubility of Compounds," Tom Stretton's Chemistry Pages, Upper Canada District School Board [accessed January 17, 2006] http://www.ucdsb.on.ca/tiss/stretton/CHEM2/compound_solubilities.html.
  • VanCleave, J., 1989. Chemistry for Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments That Really Work. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.
  • VanCleave, J., 1993. A+ Projects in Chemistry: Winning Experiments for Science Fairs and Extra Credit. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons.