Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Please Help. I bought my son a kit to test electrolytes for his science project. The instructions are missing and the project has to be finished this weekend. The kit was from Science Project Experiments: Conducting Electricity: Discovering Electrolytes At Home. We were going to test electrolytes in Power Ade, Gatorade etc. (The kit came with a beaker, electrodes, asmall meter and metal bar). I am so flustrated because I know this would have won the science fair at his school. He is in fourth grade.

Can anyone tell me how to conduct this experiment or does anyone know where I can find this experiment on the Web? If not, we will have to do another experiment and time is running out!!!

I would be deeply grateful!

I haven't been able to find that particular experiment on the web (and there are a lot of ways it might be run depending on what the meter is measuring, what the bar is made of, etc.).

I will say, though, that I've heard from a number of science fair judges that kit projects rarely win science fairs. Even the most amateurish experiment, if designed well, properly researched, and original is likely to do better than even the most polished premade experiment.

Hello,
The kit contents are relatively standard so with luck you should be just fine without any specific instructions.

The substance (Gatorade, Power Ade, etc.) will go in the beaker
The electrodes will both go in the beaker, one at each end. Make sure that they don't touch each other.
The electrodes will need to be connected to a regular 9V battery.
One electrode will connect to each battery terminal (I assume they have wire or something attatched to them, if not, grab some from your nearest radioshack or the like)
The meter will sit between one of the electrodes and the battery.

So basically, the electrical circuit will be like this:

+ terminal of battery -> wire -> +electrode -> liquid in beaker -> -electrode -> wire -> + terminal of meter -> meter dial -> -terminal of meter -> - terminal of battery -> (back to beginning)

I'm not sure of a purpose for the metal bar, the experiment should work without it just fine.

Please post another message if you still need help or can't get it to work.