Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi.

I am doing my science fair project on What Causes a Fever, but I am stuck on an experiment idea. Any ideas you can share? I was thinking I could experiment using the kids that go to the nurse everyday and recording their temperatures, but it doesn't seem like enough. Can you help?

The nurse probably takes temperatures, but I'm sure you would have to get permission from the school, the students, and their parents if you wanted to use the temperature data.

Maybe you could do an experiment with your own family, taking temperatures at various times of the day, and plotting temperature vs time of day for each member. Combined with some reading about the "normal" range of temperature for individuals, you might have enough for a project.

Using "What causes a fever" could be a problem to do, as it involves using live subjects (presumably humans), and to cause fevers (assuming you could do that) is to cause harm (temporary) to the human subjects. I'm not sure if that could be allowed in most science fairs.

On the other hand, you could do experiments on what is a normal human temperature, or how does the temperature vary during the day without causing harm.

Exactly how the body regulates temperature is actually quite complicated. Very interesting, but complicated.

Here's a wikipedia reference to temperature regulation, if this interests you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_regulation

You should also look at this thread from a student a few weeks ago who was working on a similar project:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/mentorin ... php?t=2227