Science Projects | Science Buddies Blog (Page 55)

July 1, 2011 6:21 AM

Mikaela May, student at Crowley High School, Crowley Texas, with her award winning project. Mikaela May's world is one of full of flowers... real flowers at the floral shop where she works. As an agriscience student and dedicated Future Farmers of America (FFA) member, Mikaela, now a high school senior, turned a common customer question into a successful multi-year science investigation—and came up smelling like roses. Asking Questions People who buy roses often want to… Read more

A Student Puts a "T" on Turbidity

June 21, 2011 6:40 AM

How's the water? SODIS water disinfection uses PET bottles and the power of the sun over time. Image Source: SODIS Eawag, Wikipedia) The answer depends on a number of variables, including where you are, especially if you are considering taking a drink. As Sarah Flaherty, a 9th grader at Westdale Secondary School in Hamilton, Ontario, discovered, purification strategies can be inexpensively enhanced by the strategic use of common materials. According to Sarah's science project,… Read more

From the Field: Nora Volkow

June 16, 2011 8:43 AM

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an in-depth profile of Nora Volkow, the neuroscientist in charge of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In the accompanying video, Volkow talks about the psychology and physiology behind addiction. According to Volkow, the impulse that drives one person to buy a chocolate bar from a bucket sitting at a checkout counter, even when she doesn't really want a chocolate bar, may be similar to the way an addict returns time and again to a substance, behavior, or… Read more

Building Bridges

June 13, 2011 8:42 AM

(Image: Wikipedia) Bridge Building Inspiration Born on June 13, 1806: John Augustus Roebling, an engineer especially known for suspension-style bridges and the design of the Brooklyn Bridge. From straws to balsa wood to egg shells, students can get hands-on this summer exploring and testing bridge construction. In an episode (link no longer available) of the "Magic School Bus," Ms. Frizzle's class experimented with gum drops and toothpicks. What will you use? A classic Magic School Bus… Read more

Blow: From Marshmallows to Microbes

June 3, 2011 8:24 AM

The parts of a woodwind instrument, like the clarinet reed and mouthpiece shown above, could turn the band into a bacterial hotspot! Photo: James Eaton-Lee Njan Wikipedia. At Maker Faire a few weeks ago, I wandered with my kids through a maze of techno-geeky wonderment. We started our day-long exploration of things that lie at the intersection of science, art, and DIY with a roundup of scuttling, skittering, line-following, light-seeking bots. They might not be useful around the house,… Read more

Pass the Chocolate

May 26, 2011 10:37 AM

Can you turn a craving for chocolate into a reason for science exploration? You bet! As "The Sweet Science of Chocolate" video from KQED QUEST shows, there is a lot of science that goes into the production of chocolate. It all begins with the growing of the cocoa tree and the fermentation of cocoa beans. Cocoa trees yield a surprisingly small number of beans per tree per year. A single tree produces enough beans to make roughly 2 pounds of chocolate, which means that a successful… Read more

Zombie Preparedness

May 24, 2011 12:28 PM

Zombies. Are you ready? You can get your own "zombie preparedness" badge on the CDC website. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued a guide on how to prepare for a zombie attack. That's right, the government agency put together a set of "emergency preparedness" tips for a "zombie apocalypse," an all-out mass infiltration of zombies. If you missed the article, you should probably go, right now, read it and bone up on what you need to do to protect yourself,… Read more

Visual Illusions: When What You See Is... Not What's There?

May 23, 2011 9:38 AM

Exploring the science behind what we see and what we think we see. It's not always the same thing! When you watch the animation above, focus on the white dot in the center. As the surrounding dots begin to spin, do they seem to stop changing colors until the spinning ends? In fact, they continue to change, but the motion of the overall outer ring makes it appear that they stop blinking until the ring stops spinning. If you watch it again and focus on the outer ring, you will see that the… Read more

Hard-Boiled Science

April 27, 2011 10:32 AM

Hard-boiling and dyeing eggs offers a number of avenues for families to explore both food science and chemistry. Forgoing boxed dye tablets, the eggs shown above were dyed using natural ingredients like turmeric and beets. Photo: Whiteley Creek, used with permission. We hard-boiled and dyed eggs over the weekend, and the process opened up unexpectedly fertile ground for scientific exploration in my house. A simple, early-morning Google search clued me in to the fact that for at least a… Read more

Earth Day: Staff Picks!

April 22, 2011 10:59 AM

As I wrote my blog essay in celebration of Earth Day, I found myself in unexpectedly bug-laden territory, without a compost bin, wind turbine, or reusable food container in sight. But Earth Day is about all of those things. It's about taking a moment to recognize what's around us, to take stock of where we are, and to consider ways in which we can make changes, big and small, that can make an impact on the environment. It's about conservation and awareness. Do you turn off the water while you… Read more

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