mold and health
Moderators: AmyCowen, kgudger, bfinio, MadelineB, Moderators
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cece8210
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Wed Dec 19, 2018 12:29 pm
- Occupation: Parent
- Project Question: 4th grade science project involving mold
- Project Due Date: n/a
- Project Status: I am conducting my research
mold and health
My child wants to do a project with the health affects mold causes. First year doing a project, Im totally lost. Theres plenty of growing mold projects. I don't see any all necessary about the affects it has on health.
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17eugenekim
- Expert
- Posts: 149
- Joined: Sat Sep 01, 2018 4:14 pm
- Occupation: Researcher
- Project Question: To assist others in the AAE forums
- Project Due Date: N/A
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: mold and health
Hello there and welcome to Science Buddies!
I understand doing a science project with your child can be difficult to start from scratch. If you haven't checked it out already, we do have a basic outline guide for how to start thinking about a science fair project, step by step, here: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ience-fair (particularly pertinent to your current concern might be the "Your Question" section.)
The tricky thing about doing a project involving health is that, obviously, we can't just expose ourselves or other people/animals to the mold and see what happens - there are both ethical and safety concerns to deal with. Perhaps we can narrow things down, and go from there. What kind of "health effects" are we interested in? What health effects of mold do we already know about, from either general knowledge or background research? What aspects of that effect do we want to test?
This would be a good starting point. Asking these sorts of questions can help us isolate what exactly we want to test, understanding what we want to change (the independent variable) and what we want to measure (the dependent variable). Then we can figure out how, method-wise, we're going to test those variables.
Alternatively, we could start by looking at resource limitations (what sort of materials can we acquire?) and other guidelines. If your child is doing this for a specific science fair or other program, are there restrictions or guidelines on what they can/cannot do? Did a teacher present rules or expectations? That would be another good place to start.
I understand doing a science project with your child can be difficult to start from scratch. If you haven't checked it out already, we do have a basic outline guide for how to start thinking about a science fair project, step by step, here: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ience-fair (particularly pertinent to your current concern might be the "Your Question" section.)
The tricky thing about doing a project involving health is that, obviously, we can't just expose ourselves or other people/animals to the mold and see what happens - there are both ethical and safety concerns to deal with. Perhaps we can narrow things down, and go from there. What kind of "health effects" are we interested in? What health effects of mold do we already know about, from either general knowledge or background research? What aspects of that effect do we want to test?
This would be a good starting point. Asking these sorts of questions can help us isolate what exactly we want to test, understanding what we want to change (the independent variable) and what we want to measure (the dependent variable). Then we can figure out how, method-wise, we're going to test those variables.
Alternatively, we could start by looking at resource limitations (what sort of materials can we acquire?) and other guidelines. If your child is doing this for a specific science fair or other program, are there restrictions or guidelines on what they can/cannot do? Did a teacher present rules or expectations? That would be another good place to start.